Tim Broderick: Mission Day 7: Sunday, April 9th, 2006
Sunday, a day of rest. Well, maybe not. We woke at 5am for our dawn dive so we could be in the water before sunrise. We were sitting on the bottom in 80 feet of water when the sun rose. Peaceful and serene. Thanks to three waystation tank refills, it was also a long dive of 2 hours 15 minutes. Beautiful early morning sea life and sun at both Kamper and Northeast — especially at Northeast.
As soon as the dive was over, we quickly converted the bunkroom into a robotic telesurgery lab. Today saw the first underwater robotic telesurgery as well as first time a surgeon remotely sutured at 2 second latency. Based on our telementoring and telesurgery over the last few days, it looks like we can provide medical support from the earth to a lunar base. As we had a few technical challenges related to the network and the robot, I am really excited to do some more robotic telesurgery on Tuesday. We also will use the same robot for lunar sample exploration as well.
Despite the dawn dive and lunar delay telesurgery, the highlight of the day was our personal family conferences– called PFCs in NASA-ese. The crewmembers talked to their family via videoteleconference. The kids were very funny, talking to their parents playfully as the rest of the crew went about their business all around the habitat. The crew would chime in as work would bring them into view. As my girls were in the midst of a family party, I talked to them on the phone around dinner. All is well, all understand the importance of this mission, but it is still hard on the family. Erin and Caitlin were enjoying an early Easter egg hunt and alternated giddy from chocolate and sugar with sad from missing their daddy. Instead of eggs, Maggie’s first two teeth popped in today. She will have changed quite a bit in the month I have been gone.
Lots of yellowtail snapper, eagle ray, grouper, barracuda, angels — lots of fish. I am starting to recognize some familiar faces and they are starting to recognize us as well. Our friends on the reef.
Busy day again tomorrow. Cannot believe we are almost halfway through the mission…
One Response So Far
Mark Nachbor | April 12th, 2006
The disk drive problems you have experienced could be “squeeze” of the case, as you describe, or it could be that the drives equilize to the pressure of the habitat and the fly height of the head is now wrong.