Today the NEEMO 9 mission ended successfully with “splashup” at 8:46 am. It was a beautiful, peaceful day on the reef, and all of the aquanauts are doing well and are happy to be back in the fresh air and sunshine. They will be engaged in post mission interviews, physicals, and other activities the rest of the day, and tonight we will celebrate the outstanding success of this mission at the traditional “splashup party”.
We want to take this opportunity to thank our hosts here at the National Undersea Research Center. Their professionalism and commitment to safety is second to none. They take great care of the nation’s only undersea research facility, they keep a close eye on our crewmembers, and they take great care of our Topside team and visitors. So to the habitat technicians, Jim Buckley and Ross Hein — a hearty “thank you” for teaching our crewmembers how to live as aquanauts. To Mark “Otter” Hulsbeck, a sincere thanks for the great training you gave them. To Craig Cooper, thanks for managing this (and all) NEEMO missions so professionally. For Dominic Landucci, a special thanks for all the time you put into making it possible for Aquarius to meet all the demanding technical requirements of this mission. And for the rest of the Aquarius side staff who potted daily, manned the watchdesk 24/7, and did it all with a smile, we can’t thank you enough. Finally, a special and sincere thanks to NURC Associate Director Otto Rutten for being our host and boat captain for the last 3 weeks. It wouldn’t have been possible without you all.
We can’t properly thank everyone who had a hand in making this mission successful, but a few key individuals should be noted:
- The Center for Minimal Access Surgery and Dr. Mehran Anvari, for your vision, funding, manpower, hardware, and “out of this world” objectives;
- The Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center for the funding and support;
- The National Space Biomedical Research Institute for the funding, manpower, hardware, and relevant science;
- The University of Cincinnati for allowing us to borrow Dr. Tim Broderick for this mission (we’re reluctant to give him back…);
- The ExPOC team, for your preparation, long hours, and tireless perseverance;
- JSC’s Mission Ops Directorate, for the majority of the manpower that keeps this project alive year by year, as well as your unflagging support;
- JSC’s Flight Crew Ops Directorate, for the manpower, support, and part of the crew;
- The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at JSC and Florida State University for the working diver support;
- Dr. Lee Morin, for the leadership you provided on this mission;
- Dave and Mariana McGraw, for hosting our splashup party;
- Previous NEEMO crews who helped pave the way; and
- The families and friends of all of us who’ve been away so long making this mission a success. We appreciate your sacrifices!
Stay tuned for NEEMO 10, a 7-day mission focused again on Lunar exploration concepts. It is scheduled for July 2005.
Thanks for your support and following along!
- NEEMO 9 Topside Team (Marc, Bill, Monika, Kimi, Dan, Alex, Kristen, Trevor, Pam, Valerie, Adrian)
As the second week of the NEEMO 9 mission comes to an end, the pace is starting to settle down a bit. The science objectives are largely accomplished, and the crew was able to enjoy a well-earned day off on Sunday with scheduled private conferences with their families. Several major “exploration” initiatives were begun toward the end of the week, and will be continuing for the remaining four days of the mission.
A centerpiece of previous NEEMO missions is called “Waterlab”. At first glance this may appear to be just a rickety lattice of PVC pipes, strung haphazardly together on the sea floor. But to those of us who have previously constructed Waterlab, it’s so much more! Waterlab promotes crew skills of planning out a complex task, handing over from team to team involved in the multiple construction activities required to finish it, following a procedure, and working in a cumbersome environment. It also has relevance as a Lunar analog task.
During the Apollo program there was no requirement for EVA (spacewalking) crewmembers to communicate with their landing vehicle/habitat. Crewmembers during Apollo communicated directly to Earth. Due to the planned increase in lunar surface crew size, in the future it may be beneficial for crewmembers to have the capability to communicate to crewmembers remaining in their habitat while conducting surface exploration. But the lunar horizon for an EVA crewmember is ~2.4 km, so in order to communicate to the habitat while on excursions beyond that distance, a communications relay station will need to be constructed - kind of like a mini cell phone tower. A 20′ (6.15m) tall relay tower would increase the communication range to ~9 km. So constructing Waterlab is similar to relay tower constructions we may someday see on the Moon. It is being done with a c.g. config determined from the earlier c.g. experiment.
One important question facing NASA as we prepare to return to the Moon is how to make our EVA time more efficient. During this mission we are collecting data concerning the crew members’ work efficiency, measured by comparing the overhead time it takes to prepare for an EVA compared to the productive EVA time. This measurement is called the Work Efficiency Index (WEI). Exploration EVAs (on the Moon or Mars) will be conducted at a much higher frequency than we are currently performing EVA out of the Space Shuttle or International Space Station. Therefore, the WEI of exploration EVAs will need to improve by a factor of 10 over current methods! The data collected from this and future NEEMO missions will provide insight regarding how the WEI can be improved both in terms of equipment design and crew procedures.
Another important question we face prior to returning to the Moon is how to maximize the human and robotic resources we have. We have successfully demonstrated that human operators on Earth can control robots on a distant world with numerous Mars missions. We routinely use robotics on the Space Shuttle and Space Station that are controlled by in situ astronauts. And we have the experience of hundreds of suited spacewalks. What we don’t have much experience with is optimizing between the 3 options. Crew time is precious, so it’s advantageous to move operations to ground controllers wherever possible. The ground has the time delay to deal with, but they have advantages like being able to work all night long while the crew is sleeping. In short, there is always a tradeoff between the more precious crew time and the (expected) higher efficiency of crew work. How to optimize the split of work between EVA work, crew controlled robotics, and ground controlled robotics is an important question that needs to be answered prior to returning to the Moon.
The ROV on this NEEMO mission performs the role of the robot. It can be a surface rover, or a free flyer (resembling the end of a robotic arm.) It can be controlled by the control center in Houston, or the in situ crew. As the mission continues, we have been experimenting with all options and documenting lessons learned to help answer the larger question of how best to split work. NEEMO 9 is just the tip of the iceberg in answering this question, but over the course of multiple missions we expect to have a significant database to help drive our Lunar ops concepts. The pictures below show the ROV, in this case driven by the ExPOC in Houston, bringing some Waterlab parts to an aquanaut to aid in his work.
We have several activities planned during this mission to formally measure the efficiency of EVA crewmembers compared to ground based robotics, so that working together we can optimize the science productivity of an EVA astronaut. For this study we are measuring the task efficiency index (TEI) of humans working alone compared to robots working alone compared to a human/robotic synergy solution. This TEI study is the start of a series of studies that will be conducted in various analog environments to optimize the interactions between humans and robots, using various objective measures of scientific return vs. crew time.
If you missed the Good Morning America feature on ABC yesterday, you can check it out here.
We apologize for all the false alarms on the airing of this event. Hopefully it didn’t inconvenience anyone too much. The lesson learned is that the network airs its features when it decides to, not necessarily when they tell you they will…
Thanks for staying with us!
- NEEMO 9 Topside Team
Today we accomplished the last of the CMAS (Center for Minimal Access Surgery) research objectives that were waiting to be run. The first involved looking at emergency treatment of joint injuries using ultrasound and telementored arthroscopy. The second was an investigation on haptics.
A joint injury, such as a torn meniscus or dislocation, is an example of a potential injury that would require emergency treatment by other members of the mission crew. Joint injuries are frequently diagnosed by ultrasound investigation, and depending on the injury, may then be treated by arthroscopy. This minimally invasive technique involves creating a number of small incisions through which the surgeon inserts a camera and the surgical instruments necessary to repair the injury. In this experiment, the aquanauts used a portable ultrasound device to perform a diagnostic ultrasound examination on a crewmember’s knee. They used a specially designed training manual and received guidance from an expert orthopedic surgeon in Hamilton, Ontario via telementoring. With step-by-step telementoring from Dr. Anthony Adili, they will then attempt to repair a simulated joint injury (torn meniscus) using a medical training model of a knee.
Since telementoring relies on transmission of video images over a telecommunications network, time delay (latency) becomes an issue when images are sent over very long distances. In order to study the effect of latencies similar to those that would be experienced during telementoring from earth to the moon, the astronauts will also attempt the arthroscopic joint repair with telementoring using a telecommunications network that mimics Lunar latency (2 second time delay).
This technology may one day enable expert surgeons to guide non-physicians through the procedures necessary to provide emergency surgical care to astronauts injured during space exploration missions, and to patients in remote locations without any access to a physician.
You’ve seen examples so far this mission of a surgeon, located in a remote location (Hamilton, Ontario) performing surgical techniques using a robotic device. You may be asking, “how does the surgeon feel what the robot is doing?” After all, the feedback from the tools to the hands is a big cue to a surgeon doing his work. Doesn’t he lose all sense of feel when working with a robot?
To give the operator the ability to feel, these robotic devices employee a technology called “haptics.” Haptics is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with robotic devices. By using special input/output devices the user can receive feedback from robotic devices in the form of felt sensations in the hand. So for instance, if the robotic manipulator hit something, the control in the operator’s hand would push back, so that he can feel the contact from the manipulator, thousands of kilometers away. However, there is a downside to this type of technology: a large enough time delay affects haptics to the point where the user cannot control the device. There are time delays built in any time large distances are involved. The larger the distance, the larger the delay. During NEEMO 9, we evaluated a new technology called TiDeC. TiDeC is a time delay compensator that allows a haptic enabled device to be controlled from a distance of nearly 1300 miles. Dr Anvari was again in Hamilton, and using TiDeC assisted haptics, will be able to guide the crew through a series of tasks and each side feels every move each other makes.
Thanks for staying with us!
- NEEMO 9 Topside Team
Well, the days down here are packed so full it amazes me to look at my watch and realize another one has gone by. At any given time there are several events going on. Any combination of diving, ROV ops, Robot ops, experiments, live video outreach events, planning conferences etc, etc. Everything is coordinated with our timeline and everything has an acronym so this one is OSTPV “onboard short term planning viewer”. It is quite fitting to say that it is a very fluid schedule (no pun intended).
Things are happening at such a pace that when something doesn’t work just right it can be tough to trouble shoot and keep things on schedule or as close to schedule as possible. But that is the reality of exploration so I guess it goes with the territory.
When you stop to think about the complexity of some of these operations it seems amazing some of this stuff works. For example driving an ROV seems pretty straight forward, like a video game right? Well, the when the driver is in Houston the commands go out from Mission Control Houston, out thier firewall onto the internet, across the country, into NURC Base through our computer, up to a wireless link, across the ocean, to the Life Support Bouy, down the umbilical, through a water tight penetration into the Habitat, to a computer, over to the ROV control box, out the umbilical to the ROV……and can you believe its being driven real time. Kinda mind boggling if you ask me.
So this brings to a close another day. We are all tired at the end of each day. So I’m off to my rack to get some shut eye so I can be ready to take it all on again tommorrw
Good night from the bottom of the ocean.
I just finished day eleven’s journal and here it’s day 12 already.I did a clean-up of the area I could reach with my umbilical. Lots of broken fishing line and hooks. Even though this is a research site and the general public should not be fishing or diving in the area, there sure is a lot of debris.
Superlite-17 ops went fairly smooth today. Dave and Nicole had the morning dives, building a structure called “Waterlab”. This is to simulate a tower that might have to be built on the moon or Mars someday to aid in extending the horizon for communications.
Ron and Tim had the afternoon dives, using Cobratac and Linkquest, running a predetermined grid tracking exercise. They were given waypoints and had to navigate to each site using special tracking equipment.
Ross got the afternoon ship’s husbandry. for a few hours each day the techs need to keep on top of cleaning the plumbing, zincs, valves, and cabling. Go a few days without the cleaning and the marine growth can cover an area.
Once again thanks to Topside for all the support.