It was another busy day under the ocean! We got up at 6 am and started getting ready for work. The mornings can be kind of hectic since we have to have breakfast, get cleaned up, read all of the overnight mail from our mission support team and then get the plan for the day organized. We have to choreograph activities so that we can stay out of each other’s way. We are quite used to this morning routine by now.
The official start of the working day is at our Daily Planning Conference with both the local mission control team and the remote team in Houston. This is where we coordinate all of the day’s events. Today our activities included completing the LunaSea construction, doing some center of gravity studies, and some education outreach events. The first dive, which was the LunaSea project, came pretty fast after the conference so TJ and Bob got to work getting the dive helmets ready to go. Every morning we have to connect the helmets to the umbilical and make sure that we have good communication, breathing air and camera views. It is a busy time with a lot of activity on the wet porch.
Bob and Tim were the first to go in today, and they finished the LunaSea construction. We were really excited to see the tower go up and take a picture with our “flag” on the mast of the constructed tower. The guys headed out to the site, pulling a sled which contained cameras and the rest of the construction equipment. They very cleverly mounted the video camera on the sled so we could get some good video documentation of the final phases of the construction. Unfortunately the visibility was not as good today as it had been earlier in the mission, but they were still able to obtain some good shots. Before erecting the tower they had to connect the three modules together and then attach the ladder and the side braces. Finally it was time to raise the tower and it turned out that it was easier in the water than it had been on dry land. The team of two could do it easily. After it was up we all took a moment to admire it, but then we had to bring it down, disconnect the modules, the ladders, the braces, and move the tower closer to Aquarius. We experimented with two ways of moving the modules, pushing/pulling it through the sand, and attaching wheels and trying to use them to move the modules. The guys determined that pushing was easier when using the wheels and pulling was easier without the wheels.
The dive was very successful and we were happy with how much we were able to do and the topside team got a lot of good information about construction in extreme environments. When the guys returned to the wetporch we only had a short amount of time to get them out of their helmets and wet suits, have everyone grab a quick lunch and get Sandy and TJ suited up for their run.
The second dive of the day was another part of the center of gravity study that Tim and Bob had participated in earlier in the mission. The idea behind the study is to have a series of weights distributed with different patterns on a specially designed rig we wear on our back. We then, for each configuration, do a series of tasks, such as running, shoveling, kneeling, rock collecting, to determine which weight distribution is the more comfortable to work with. What was interesting to notice was how much change there was between the configurations and how it affected how easily the tasks can be done. The information that we collected, along with the information from other NEEMO missions will help determine the best design for a planet based space suit. Since we finished the dive earlier than expected we continued with dismantling of the Lunasea tower to make it easier to transport to the surface.
After returning to the habitat we had a telecon with mission control centers to discuss the lunar science scenario that we would be doing the tomorrow. Later in the evening we were able to take a crew photo and then spent our time sorting photos, getting cameras ready, and electronically recording the data that we had taken during the day.
Our days on Aquarius are very busy but we have been enjoying ourselves and learning a lot. It is hard to believe that our mission is half way over. Whenever we have a spare moment we spend some time looking out the porthole and watching the abundant life swim by. Our neighbors, the goliath grouper swim by every evening to peek in at us and several nights in a row a large sea turtle has come to the habitat to sleep. Just like in space you never get tired of looking out the window!
Today we had another exciting day in the Aquarius habitat. The activities started with the first team of aquanauts performing a coral science collection activity while simulating the conditions on the moon. We use a combination of the effects of water buoyancy, a special suit, and a lot of lead weights so that the team weighs the same here outside Aquarius as they would on the moon. Under these conditions they simulate the same sorts of activities that we expect to perform when NASA returns astronauts to the moon. The pictures of the coral were really neat to see. Just like during the hookah dives last night, the bright colors of the coral showed up in the pictures they took! The crew also used some underwater navigation equipment to accurately identify the location of the coral patches, as well as the location of the man-made items they found.
During the second dive of the day, the team finished construction of the LunaSea base and located a suitable location for tomorrow’s final construction task. Remember from yesterday that LunaSea is a plastic structure designed to simulate constructing a communication tower on the moon. LunaSea is made up of 3 modules, a base, and a few pieces of additional support. Unlike on the moon, the sea floor near Aquarius has a lot of man-made items that we need to avoid. Some of these items are valuable sensors used to collect information about the conditions here near Aquarius. Tomorrow’s task will involve raising the tower to its final height and flying the NEEMO 11 flag, which should occur before lunch!
During both of these dives, a team from a control room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston tracked the crew’s movements and directed their activities. The team in Houston had a lot of suggestions during the dives, similar to how the mission control team has a lot of suggestions for the crews on the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station. This makes finding a good location for the construction challenging! Our friends were also able to watch and listen to activities on the webcam, so even way below the water surface they can keep up with what we are doing.
Two of the divers completed their hookah dives this evening. They had a chance to see the bright colors of the habitat under the dive light, just like the other two divers did last night! They were really excited to have the chance to dive at night. One of the team members was able to wave to his family who was watching the webcam from Houston!
Be sure to watch the final LunaSea construction activities tomorrow!
Today at about 10:21 am Sandy Magnus, T.J. Creamer, Tim Kopra, Bob Behnken, and Larry Ward joined an elite group of people in this world who have spent 24 hours under the sea in “saturation”, making them the world’s 5 newest aquanauts. Roger Garcia, of course, was already an experienced aquanaut. Sandy, by virtue of having flown in space and lived under the sea, becomes the 14th “aquastronaut”!
NASA is in the early phases of designing the space suit for Lunar and Mars exploration, and the NEEMO Project is deep in the heart of the solution, in conjunction with astronaut Mike Gernhardt and the Advanced Projects Office. The Apollo moon walks demonstrated that the weight and center of gravity (c.g) of the space suit and portable life support system backpack were important parameters affecting astronaut performance. To investigate the acceptable c.g. limits for future designs, the NASA EVA Physiology, Systems and Performance Project (EPSP) working in conjunction with the Crew and Thermal Systems engineers have developed reconfigurable c.g back pack that can be worn by divers on “sea walks”. On Sunday the NEEMO divers weighed out at lunar gravity levels (1/6 g), donned the reconfigurable backpacks and performed a series of tasks representative of planetary exploration. These tasks, performed under six different center of gravity configurations included: timed walks, jogs and runs, kneeling, falling and recovering, picking up rocks, shoveling and climbing ladders. The divers evaluated each of the tasks using a modified Cooper-Harper rating scale. The timed ambulation tasks will be compared to a control group performing the same ambulations using a partial gravity weight relief system at the Johnson Space Center. This comparison will allow the data to be adjusted for the effects of water drag.
The advantages of performing these tasks on saturation excursion dives include a real operational environment, unlimited time duration and the ability to investigate the full six degree of freedom work volume. For safety reasons the ground based partial gravity simulators do not allow subjects to fall down. They will also wear the reconfigurable c.g backpacks while performing other mission tasks. The divers will perform half of the task with the c.g currently planned for the Lunar/Mars suit and the other half with the c.g configuration that had the best Cooper-Harper ratings. This data will be combined with c.g studies in other environments (partial gravity simulator and parabolic flight) to drive out the optimum configuration of the exploration suit portable life support system (backpack). This is the 3rd NEEMO mission collecting subjective data on best c.g. configurations.
The Superlite 17 is a hard hat diving system, and is one of the most popular commercial diving systems in the world. For “surface” exploration tasks, it allows our aquanauts to be weighted to give a buoyancy effect like the gravity on the moon and Mars, and gives them a limited visibility helmet much like they might find in a space suit. For simplicity and safety reasons, it uses an umbilical instead of a closed-loop life support system.
Note the helmet camera on top. During these excursions, you can see what they see and hear the live communications between our aquanaut team and the Mission Control team in Houston via streaming video at the NURC website below:
http://www.uncw.edu/aquarius/thumb_cam.htm
Scroll down to the “Diver Cam” section, and choose which diver you want to follow along with. It requires “Quicktime” to be installed, but will prompt you through the installation if your computer doesn’t already have it loaded.
Finally, the crew and Houston-based control team got a chance to do some piloting exercises with the underea robot we call “Scuttle”. Scuttle 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, as with NEEMO 9 and 10 before it, we will be experimenting with all options and documenting lessons learned to help answer the larger question of how best to split work between the ground-based control team and crew. Over the course of multiple missions we expect to have a significant database to help drive our lunar ops concepts.
We had a great day today on Aquarius. This morning, our first team of divers finished building the first two modules of a tower structure called “LunaSea.” The tower is constructed out of PVC pipe, and the pieces are held together with bolts. When it’s fully assembled, Lunasea will be about 25 feet tall. This task has been an excellent way for us to learn ways to work together in this very foreign environment.
After a quick lunch, our second team of divers worked on evaluating the effect of changes to the center of gravity of a space suit. Engineers from the Johnson Space Center designed a backpack-like structure for our team to wear which allows different weights to be added. The team members evaluated six of these configurations. It was really interesting to see how just the weight distribution for this simulated space suit could dramatically change how difficult or easy it was to do different activities. For example, it might be very easy to kneel and pick up rocks with a particular configuration while it would be very difficult to jog or run. All of this data will be very useful for the engineers who are designing and building the next generation of space suits.
Since there was some extra time at the end of this dive, the second diver team went out to finish constructing the final module of LunaSea. We’re now ready to build the base, put the modules together, and raise LunaSea!
We also had the opportunity to use a robotic vehicle that we could either drive on the ocean floor or “fly” around. We learned techniques to control the robot, and we also provided camera support for the dive crew’s construction of LunaSea. These camera views help the crewmember in Aquarius and the support team on the surface to improve the coordination of our missions. This kind of work is definitely a team sport!
Our final activities for the day were a couple of individual “hookah” dives. Hookah dives use a normal scuba regulator with an air supply line from Aquarius. Just like our missions with the helmet, we always have an emergency air bottle in case there is a problem with this air supply line. It was quite a strange sensation to go to all the “viewports” (windows) around Aquarius and see our other crewmembers working inside! Since we were out at dusk using a flashlight, it was also surprising to see all the colors of the coral, algae, and other growth on the surface of Aquarius. In the daylight, Aquarius just looks blue-green, but under the bright flashlight, the outside is covered with reds, yellows, and greens. This unexpectedly colorful view of our underwater home, combined with its four-foot long grouper, and schools of literally thousands of small fish, made this hookah dive especially memorable.
The NEEMO 11 crew successfully “splashed down” at 10:21 am Saturday to start their 7-day mission aboard Aquarius.
The day was very busy as they tackled 2 orientation dives, safety briefings on their new home, and getting all of their gear unpacked, set up, and stowed. Previous crews have compared the pace of the day to their first hours on space missions. These activities went smoothly – even getting ahead on the timeline and objectives at times – which was a testimony to the preparation the crew and support team put into this mission.
Tomorrow they will beginning a construction task under the supervision of the Mission Control Team in Houston, doing a study to help determine the optimal center of gravity configuration for spacesuits, and operating a multi-purpose robot.
- NEEMO 11 Topside Team