NASA’s NEEMO Project Trains Astronauts for Deep Space Mission

Several aquanauts are conducting a 12-day mission beneath the sea off the Florida coast. The mission is designed to help train the four-person team for future space exploration. They will be spending their time on board the underwater research station Aquarius. Aquarius sits on the sea floor at a depth of 62 feet and is located over 3 miles off of Key Largo. The NASA program known as NEEMO for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations program is designed to put participants in extreme environments to prepare them for traveling to asteroids, planets or other space destinations. This simulates living on a spacecraft allowing the team to test techniques for future space missions. This is the 16 expedition for NASA’s NEEMO program, and this mission’s focus is to help future astronauts explore near-Earth asteroids, a key priority for NASA. "We're trying to look out into the future and understand how we'd operate on an asteroid," NASA astronaut Mike Gernhardt, NEEMO principal investigator, said in a statement. "You don't want to make a bunch of guesses about what you'll need and then get to the asteroid to find out it won't work the way you thought it would. NEEMO helps give us the information we need to make informed decisions now." The crew will spend the 12-day mission focusing on three areas including dealing with communication delays, coming up with techniques to asteroids to a space vehicle during excursions, and also figuring out optimal crew sizes. Aquarius poses a unique training opportunity and is the only underwater research station in the world. It is owned by NOAA and managed by the University of North Carolina. The station is 43 feet by 20 feet by 16.5 feet. There are showers, toilets, and six bunks. The station is air-conditioned and has a refrigerator and microwave. There is also a wireless link to shore and computers for the team to use. President Obama has instructed NASA to work toward sending humans to a nearby space rock by the year 2025.