Sunday and a day of rest - of sorts. We had a few hours each of ‘white space,’ unscheduled time today, but this was actually catch up time to get paperwork, research results, and habitat resources in order. It disappeared pretty quickly. We did enjoy a link up with the International Space Station, speaking with Mike Fincke, a NEEMO veteran soon on his way home from a six-month tour, and Leroy Chow, his relief. Mike is pretty much always smiling, and was floating and flipping all over the place during the event, I think to savor the last few days of weightlessness. Good to talk with our compadres. Another high point was an opportunity for each of us to videoconference with our families, seeing their faces and giving them in turn a video tour of Aquarius. This is so much like the weekly videoconferences between astronauts and their families, where the crewmembers get to show the unique aspects of their current home; except here if you flip upside down you fall on your head.
Can’t wax too eloquently about the details of this day, except regarding how our crew has shaped up. Everyone brings a unique outlook and set of skills to the table. We watch out for one another and each in their own fashion navigates the controlled chaos of the day in concert with the team. Picture a small orchestra where each member is wearing a different Hawaiian shirt and probably reading something else besides the music, but darned if those sticks don’t go up and down at the same time, and everyone finishes precisely together. This is particularly amusing during the educational and press events we conduct, usually with two or three of us seated calmly and neatly dressed (from the waist up) at the galley table. The others are anything but calm, and if the camera were to pan out just a few inches you would note people crawling by on their bellies to get from one end of the main lock to the other, thrown items flying overhead, and little nods flashed by the interviewees between questions to affirm the location of this item or the download status of that camera. This is not a venue for the multitask-challenged.
The real fun came at day’s end when we finally got to step outside for a night dive. Again we watched the habitat lights fade from view as we headed out to the deep northeast for a near-Zen experience. Many of the normal daytime fish were hanging out motionless in sand crevasses between coral ridges, and an enormous crab was out feeding on algae just under our excursion line. After an hour or so out on the northeast section, we returned back to the habitat and spent another 40 minutes playing along the outside of our digs. We joined an incredible assortment of climbing and swimming life, the squirrels and the birds of our backyard, and our own Billy Cooksey out there on a hookah line with a bright light for some night photography. Overhead hab lights throw shadows of fish onto the sandy bottom like dark swimming ghosts, and every so often something enormous eclipses one of the big lights. The Aquarius itself looks as if it could be on any remote planet; a high-tech alien outpost with chicken noodle soup inside. It was wonderful to come in and swap “did you see that….?” stories, and the rack sure feels great.
This morning we started the day a bit differently. Instead of watching the daylight appear from our galley table, we were out in scuba gear lying on the sea floor in about 70 feet of water. There was a faint lunar glow breaking the surface as we made our way outbound along the excursion line and watched the habitat lights fade into the blackness behind us. We tied off a couple of cave reels on the excursion line and dropped to the bottom, keeping the lights and the comm off. It’s amazing what there is to see in spite of the darkness. What little moonlight was penetrating to that depth was producing shadow outlines of coral heads, and the slightest scratch of the bottom threw out a shower of bioluminescent sparks. Occasionally you could look up and see shadows of what were most likely large barracuda cruising overhead, and you would realize two things: there are creatures out there with senses you don’t have, and you may not be at the top of the food chain this morning.
With the occasional strategic light beam, we were able to see the night shift getting ready to pack it in. These were reef crawlers mostly, shrimp, crabs, brilliantly colored bristle worms, and large feather dusters. As the light came up, the morning commute began. Fish began to awaken and move, and those speedy and voracious yellow tailed and horse-eyed jacks began to come in on the habitat where the smaller fish (read breakfast) congregate. We also found ourselves among many juvenile barracuda who seemed very curious about us, following us as we came in close and burned our remaining air and dive time around Aquarius.
Living down here, you have an opportunity to see things you would only happen upon by chance in years of surface diving. You have the unique ability to get to know individuals and watch behavior patterns of small groups. The species diversity right around the habitat is striking in its own right. And since I am sitting here by the window and BOB (big old barracuda) is hovering right next to me, these guys deserve special mention. There are a handful of very large barracuda and perhaps a couple score of juveniles that just seem to hang out here, like a pride of lazy lions amidst the hundreds of mostly smaller inhabitants. Mostly they seem to mingle peacefully, like a tranquil aquarium scene. But when you look at their size and health, not to mention those foreboding teeth, you realize what successful predators they are. On rare occasion you glimpse a flash of silver as one of these hits a fish and severes it into two neat halves that are quickly devoured. The shoal from which the meal was culled scatters instantly, regroups within a minute and life goes on like nothing happened. This is the African Savannah, in three dimensions.
After our dawn dive and a fast breakfast, we stepped again onto the treadmill of experiments, imagery, timeline management, and public and educational outreach activities. It’s a fairly frenetic pace, and we were happy to head out the door again to do our final Waterlab construction sortie. Getting out on scuba definitely makes up the peaceful parts of our day. We finished bolting the main elements together and made advantage of a habitat guest diver - our training mentor Ross Hein - to run the video camera as we floated the truss structure to the top of the towers. It is truly moving how much pride a group of whacko type A perfectionists can take in a rickety lattice of PVC pipe! She looks good out there on the sea floor, as good as any platform NASA has ever built. Pirate flag notwithstanding.
Today is mission day 6. This morning we went on a dawn dive. We left the habitat at 6:30 am when it was dark. With our lights on, we made our way to a patch of coral 400 ft from the habitat. It was pitch black except for a small beacon of light coming from the surface. After some consideration, we realized this was the moon beaming its light through the water column. We then waited for sun rise.
Slowly, as the sun rose on the surface, a blue cone of light developed above us. This blue cone became a portal through which light could enter our world. The ocean floor slowly became illuminated and our surroundings were revealed to us.
This blue cone slowly expanded to fill our visibility range and more and more light flooded down to us. Over a period of 30 minutes, we entered our daytime.
And so for you on the surface of the earth, there is a sunrise on the eastern horizon, and there is a sunset on the western horizon. For us under the surface of the earth, there is a cone creation event centered directly above each of us that allows light to enter our column, and there is a cone collapse event again centered directly above each of us that takes our light away.
And so you could say that in our world “the sun rises and sets on each of us every day”. That’s why even a bad day in the water column is better than a good day above the water column.
Today our Aquanauts got to try something a little different: driving a remotely operated rover across the sea floor. This little robot, a VGTV-Xtreme, was quite the hit. It’s about as big as a laptop computer case, and runs on two treads like a miniature tank. The operator controls it from a small control unit with a joystick and video screen that shows what the camera on the rover is seeing. Something very similar to this was used to look for survivors after 9/11.
We sent it down to the habitat and got it hooked up, but the control panel wouldn’t come on. It was noticed that the touch pad controls were all depressed from the increased pressure inside Aquarius. It quickly became apparent that the only solution would be to somehow get air underneath the touch pad, so that the pressure on each side of each button could equalize. Wasting no time, our resident surgeon Craig got out a small suturing needle and deftly lanced each button pad. Viola! Problem solved. We started this mission planning to do surgery with robots. Now suddenly we were doing surgery on robots.
This done, the crew started taking turns driving it. Our topside team was there on scuba to evaluate and document how it operated underwater. Later, while the aquanauts were out working on Waterlab, the ExPOC in Houston took control and drove it around for a while. Among other things, they were able to take it over to the area the aquanauts were working in and see them on the camera. Just think: the ground control team had the capability to tell the camera to “go stand over there” to give them a better view of the crew they are watching over, and the work they are doing. This capability is likely to be a very common thing on future exploration missions. And you were there when we did it for the first time… Our thanks to the gang from American Standard Robotics, who graciously supported our evaluation of this capability.
Two of the major Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) objectives were performed this weekend. The first was a hand vein suture experiment. In space flight, astronauts are subjected to a zero gravity environment that could potentially cause minor or severe body trauma. There are a number of life threatening conditions which may require suturing to control bleeding, such as deep lacerations or severed arteries. The NEEMO crew will be testing their knot tying skills today as they attempt to suture a fake severed vessel for the first time, a task that may very well need to be performed by an astronaut in space flight someday. Luckily, they will not be doing this alone: in Hamilton, Ontario, Dr Anvari will be tele-mentoring them, guiding them step by step as they tie the sutures.
Working in an extreme environment sometimes calls for the assistance of a robotic device. These devices are controlled by someone located some distance away; this is called tele-manipulation. To give the operator the ability to feel, these robotic devices employee a technology called Haptics. Quantifying the usefulness and limitations of Haptics was the second CMAS objective. Haptics is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with robotic devices. By using special input/output devices users can receive feedback from robotic devices in the form of felt sensations in the hand. But there is a downside to this type of technology: time delays can affect haptics to the point where the user cannot control the device. On this mission the crew has been evaluating a new technology called TiDeC. TiDeC is a time delay compensator designed to allow a haptic-enabled device to be controlled from a distance of nearly 1300 miles. Dr Anvari was in Hamilton, and using TiDeC assisted haptics, guided the crew through a series of tasks with the ability to feel every move each other makes, even the mistakes.
We have a distinguished VIP visiting our team in the ExPOC on Monday to observe first hand. We’ll tell you how it went in tomorrow’s Topside Report.
Greetings!
As part of our exploration challenge, we are evaluating some different robots on this mission. You might think that if finding commercial robots would be difficult, then finding commercial robots that work underwater would be nearly impossible. It turns out that’s not quite true - there are several different types of robots out there. Today we were fortunate to have members of the Underwater Crime Scene Investigation team from the Panama City Campus of Florida State University with us at the invitation of NURC. They use a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to do crime scene investigation. This particular ROV can be “flown” around underwater on 300 foot tether from a boat. It can take video of what it’s seeing, and even has a manipulator on the front. Robots like this will be important in staking out human habitats on the Moon and Mars one day. One use is that they can take all of the risk of being exposed in the hazardous environment, but can act as the remote eyes, ears (or whatever kind of sensor we put on them) of the astronaut back in the habitat. Another use is that when an astronaut does go out on an excursion, the robot can relay information that helps the guy back in the habitat that’s assisting him. It was amazing how useful it was to us - the mission control in a sense to be able to keep track remotely of the work being done at the bottom of the sea below us. The lady and gentlemen from FSU were consummate professionals, and were a pleasure to work with today.
The NEEMO crew has also been working on “Waterlab” for the last few days. Waterlab is like an enormous puzzle made of PVC pipes and fittings, and held together by hundreds of bolts and nuts. Each piece is uniquely labeled, and a series of complicated, laminated instructions accompanies these bundles of parts on the sea floor just off the aft end of Aquarius. Each part was drilled after it was put in place originally, meaning that each piece only fits in one place in one unique orientation. It can be challenging, frustrating, or fun - sometimes all three at once. Whatever the crewmember’s perception, it does require them to think ahead, concentrate on the instructions, use their hands well, and control their bodies with great precision while encumbered with diving gear. When completed, it will stand some 25 feet above the sea bed. That’s high enough that our aquanauts will have to exercise care in the final construction that they don’t go above their 40 foot depth limit while putting the top on! On this mission, Waterlab construction will take place over the course of several more days. We’ll get you some pictures of it once its completed.
A press release for Monday’s Dr. Debakey event is added below.
Thanks for following along,
NEEMO 7 Topside Team
Press Release