Today the NEEMO 10 mission ended successfully with “splashup” at 9:48 am. It was a bouncy, windy day on the reef, but 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, Mark Hulsbeck and Dominic Landucci – a hearty “thank you” for teaching our crewmembers how to live as aquanauts. To Roger Garcia, a sincere thanks for the great Superlite training you gave them. To Craig Cooper and Jim Buckley, thanks for managing this (and all) NEEMO mission so professionally. And for the rest of the Aquarius staff who potted daily, manned the watchdesk 24/7, and did it all with a smile, we can’t thank you enough. Finally, special and sincere thanks to NURC Associate Director Otto Rutten for being our host and boat captain for the last 2 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 entities should be noted:
- The Constellation Program, for the funding that paid for NEEMO 10;
- 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;
- Dr. Mike Gernhardt, Kevin Rullman, and Jennifer Jadwick for the preparatory work on so many of the exploration objectives we accomplished;
- 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 11, a 7-day mission focused again on Lunar exploration concepts. It is scheduled for September 2006.
Thanks for your support and following along!
- NEEMO 10 Topside Team
Having done a number of 10 day missions, this 7 day NEEMO 10 mission flew by. It’s hard to believe that we are already decompressing in preparation to return to the surface.
This was my first time conducting a mission using the SuperLite 17 diving system from the habitat. It had its challenges and I learned a few things. The NASA/NOAA Aquanaut team seemed to be well pleased with the results of using SL-17’s to simulate moving about on the moon and mars. The helmet cameras and communications really enhanced their capabilities. The ROV provided an interesting addition to the habitat’s support capabilities. The camera shots it provided were great and I’m sure NASA’s EXPOC enjoyed controlling it from Houston.
On Thursday, we had the privilege of an audio/video link to the International Space Station. An Aquarius alumnae, Jeff Williams, was on the station. It’s truly impressive when you’re living below the ocean talking to friends living in space circling the earth. What a world!
From my perspective here in Aquarius, the collaboration between NASA, NOAA and UNCW was quite successful. Goals were met and exceeded. Karen Kohanowich, from NOAA’s National Undersea Research Program, will have some interesting sea stories to relate back at headquarters. It was a pleasure to have her and the rest of the crew aboard for this mission. Koichi did a fantastic job keeping his crew focused on a busy NASA time line. Drew and Karen Nyberg were always enthusiastic and willing to help the techs out when needed. Dominic, of the NURC crew, was indispensable in keeping the myriad “electronicals”, that were so important for this mission, on line.
Of course, no Aquarius mission can be conducted without topside support. The NASA topside team was very busy in supporting the Aquanaut diving scenarios. The NURC team provided the excellent professional support that has become expected from this experienced crew. Thanks to all and job well done!
The crew awakened slowly for their last day underwater. We pulled out the timeline and joked about reposting Mission Day 1 and starting all over again. Since the aquanauts have to be back in the habitat at least six hours before decompression, no diving was scheduled for the day. Instead, the team stayed busy packing up and conducting an exterior survey of the habitat with the remotely-operated vehicle (ROV)
Koichi worked late the night before reconfiguring the ROV from its ground rolling/sampling/collecting mode to a more streamlined flying mode (he removed the wheels, saddlebag and camera post). Each of the team members took a turn flying around the habitat. The ROV has a very useful “automatic hover” mode that made the operation easier; no one became tangled in umbilicals or got too close to the habitat. At the end of the time, the ROV watched the surface support divers try new techniques to pick up the weights and underwater equipment that remained at the worksite.
A ”tag-up” with the International Space Station astronauts was the highlight of the day. The team spoke with Jeff Williams, Pavel Vinogradov and Thomas Reiter as they orbited over Central America. Jeff had been a member of NEEMO 3 and had been scuba-trained by Mark Hulsbeck, so the crew had a number of NEEMO stories to share. Jeff reemphasized how similar the NEEMO mission was to his space experience, especially in matters of timeline, procedures and just getting along with folks in a confined space. The discussion will be broadcast on NASA TV and will be available on the NASA website.
After a quick visit and brief from the doc, our decompression hab tech Roger Garcia came down and got us all ready for our first hour of decompression on oxygen. The procedure entails everyone staying in their bunks breathing oxygen from a mask for three 20-minute periods. After five days in the wet suit helmets, the oxygen masks weren’t too bad, although there is a bit of resistance on the exhale. Dominic set up the “Pirates of the Caribbean” video to keep us entertained, so the hour went by very quickly.
Afterward, we had our first quiet evening and were able to catch up on journals, photos, and e-mail, plan tomorrow’s splash-up party, come up with new mixtures of dehydrated food for dinner and share sea stories. The best sea stories are those we made this week though, and we can’t wait to get out and tell them!
Today we accomplished an objective we called a “vehicle inspection.” On the International Space Station and Space Shuttle we sometimes need to look at something externally to understand a problem we have or damage that has occurred. This is how the protective tiles on the Space Shuttle get inspected after launch now. The primary method for doing this is to use one of the Canadian-built robotic arms and maneuver it into position so that its video cameras can show the specialists on the ground what is going on. This is a primary method (as opposed to a spacewalk) for two reasons: risk to the crew, and “work efficiency” of a spacewalk (or “EVA” as we call them.)
We envision that periodic inspections of a lunar habitat will be required just as they are on our current space vehicles, and that a robotic system will have a prominent role once again (because spacewalks carry some additional risk by their very nature.) For instance, we may notice that there’s a small leak because the pressure keeps slowly falling inside the habitat. A big enough leak into the vacuum of space might be visible from the outside – kind of like seeing your breath on a cold winter’s day. In our scenario, to play the role of a robotic arm we used our trusty little ROV again. The crew flew it all around the exterior of Aquarius, taking care not to hit Aquarius, but also getting close enough to see little details in the video camera. As for the vehicle inspection, the crew was able to successfully and confidently fly it all around their habitat, and get high resolution imagery while doing so.
The crew was also able to conduct a ship-to-ship video linkup with the International Space Station today. Former NEEMO 3 crew commander Jeff Williams is currently on the ISS as a member of the Expedition 13 crew, along with Pavel Vinogradov and Thomas Reiter. For his NEEMO mission, Jeff (like our NEEMO 10 crew) was trained by our NEEMO 10 aquanaut Mark Hulsbeck. The crew reported this opportunity to swap stories of sea and space was the highlight of their day.
However, the clock is running out, and today the crew will began the 16+ hour process called “decompression” in order to allow them to safely “splashup” tomorrow. This is what we call “deco” day. As you now know, they have spent the last 6 days at a depth of 47 feet. At that depth, their bodies have taken on excess amounts of nitrogen which has been absorbed in their body tissues and must be removed.
Decompression is a very safe procedure which is accomplished in several steps: 1) The crew breathes pure oxygen for 3 short intervals to help decrease or “washout” the nitrogen in their blood; 2) the main living quarters are “locked out” from the “wet porch” area and the internal habitat pressure is slowly brought to the surface pressure by exhausting the internal air to the surface (14 hours); and finally 3) the habitat is “blown down” to the 47 foot level again in just a few minutes. Then the hatch is opened and the crew swims slowly to the surface under the watchful eye of escorting safety divers. They should be on the surface at ~ 9:42 am on Friday, where we will be waiting on the boat to take them home under the expert supervision of NURC Associate Director Otto Rutten.
- NEEMO 10 Topside Team
Last night was a time for new life on the reef, as clouds of plankton, brine shrimp and fish eggs rained down in front of the viewports all evening. The microscopic creatures were fascinating. Tiny shapes of shrimp, guppies, and crabs floated and lightly oscillated with the waves above. Occasionally a small jelly fish would join the cloud, or a fish would swim by with its mouth opened. In the morning, Mark told us that the orange cup corals had spawned also. The habitat is covered with an orange coating that looks like a dry sponge. At night, however, it comes alive in stalks of orange feathers of coral that coat the habitat like a cushion.
The aquanauts took advantage of an extra hour of sleep and then got ready for their last dive of the mission. For K2 and Drew, it was also the longest at four hours. The dive started a little late because of helmet communications problems, but the divers made up the time. The first half of the dive consisted of the Exploration Planning and Operations Center (ExPOC) giving directions to the divers to find a simulated cargo ship that had crashed on the moon. The simulated cargo ships were actually two transponders that had been placed the day before. The divers tried two of the moon configurations of the potable life support system (PLSS) mockup suit during the exercise, and rated their performance during each excursion. A simple exercise like falling to your knees once can tell you one thing about a suit, but hiking around in it for an hour, dashing back and forth to tend wayward umbilicals, and using it while your mind is on something else can tell you something completely different. Although it was nowhere close to the sheer strength challenge of the Mars suit, exercising in the moon suit took a bit of effort and stamina.
The second part of the EVA (or extravehicular activity) consisted of repeating the task loop while weighted in the MK12 coverall suits. It was good not to be encumbered with a shoulder-mounted weight belt, but both divers were pretty spent by the time they completed the course six times. In general, all tasks except shoveling were easier with lighter weight. The final course was done with only ten pounds of weight, and both Drew and K2 took advantage of the weightlessness to try bounding and flying around the work area.
In the afternoon, Karen and Koichi completed the survey part of Scenario 1 on their final dive of the mission. They returned to ten of the reefs that the other team (K2 and Drew) had marked on Mission Day 3, and conducted more descriptive analysis of them, and then mapped most of the rest of the work area.