We woke up early and excited. Today was going to be a good day because our objectives for the day included plenty of diving. We wanted to maximize our dive times, so immediately after breakfast and the morning planning conference, Tim and Joe began to prepare for our dives. In fact Tim was so excited to get out and get diving that he skipped breakfast and kept Joe in tow as they ran through their dive pre-check lists.
Tim and Joe explored Sector C, an area to the east of the habitat. They were heavily laden with equipment—a diver mapping and navigation system, a diver tracking system, video camera, still camera, and the rest of our technical dive gear. They walked along the ocean bottom, exploring the sea floor just as we would explore the moon upon our return in a few years. The reef survey of this sector will allow us to return to the most interesting areas in a few days and obtain representative samples of the surrounding terrain. We’re testing this technique to evaluate its effectiveness for our future lunar expeditions. A side benefit to the dives is the amazing wildlife we encounter. We were visited by a big turtle affectionately called aquanaut number 7. He approached us from directly opposite the station, checking both Tim and Joe out individually like he was looking our equipment over for our sea safety review. Plenty of Jack fish, snapper, and barracuda. In all there were beautiful fish and coral all around Joe on an amazing three hour dive.
Jose’s educational outreach was exciting. Six schools, including one from the United Kingdom, participated. Dominic assisted Jose in giving a great tour of the habitat. The students asked good questions about our experiments, remote robotic surgery experiments and the plant germination experiment. Some also asked about our weight suit studies related to the design of a new space suit and moon suit design. The aquanauts really enjoy these school kids joining the mission. Their questions are extremely interesting and right on subject for exploration of the seas and space.
Potting operations confounded by current also wreaked havoc on the NURC divers as they had to use all their skills to bring up components of a robot while bringing in components of another robot. All of this equipment is “one of a kind” and full of electronics. The potting divers use extra care to keep the material dry and protected as it transits down from the surface ship through the pressures of water to Aquarius. When transporting items down, they need to make sure that the items are protected from the increased pressure of the deeper depth and are not damaged by their packing material being crushed into them. When bringing items up from Aquarius, the divers have to make sure that all of the air is removed from the bags, so that as the item is brought up, it does not start up to the surface too fast and pull the diver up with it. If possible, they prefer to use pressure canisters, known as “pots” (hence the term, “potting”) that keep the item at a constant pressure (whether starting at sea level or at habitat depth) and relieve the pressure change once at the final destination. Then the biggest issue for the diver is just the initial weight and buoyancy of the pot, which does not change with depth.
Heide and Jose finished off the LunaSea, which simulates a communication tower, during their afternoon simulated moon walk. However, the afternoon was challenging as a strong current developed making it hard for the aquanauts to work and erect the structure. Perhaps the highlight of the construction was when our commander, Heide, installed the NEEMO 12 flag on the solar array. Along with the aquanauts building the LunaSea tower, the rover was to be out observing. The remote operation of the rover from MCC was successful today. However, we cut the operations short due to that pesky strong current.
In the evening, we have the opportunity to catch up on our daily reports and e-mails. All in all, it was another great day from the ocean floor. We are amazed at all of the analogies that we have with space and lunar exploration, but also how the ocean floor is a very unique and wonderful place. We hope that you continue to join us for more exciting tasks tomorrow.
The NEEMO 12 Crew
Aquarius Habitat
Mission Day 3 was a very busy day, featuring more tele-robotics activities, life sciences experiments, and educational outreach events.
The Space and Life Sciences Directorate (SLSD) at Johnson Space Center sponsored a suite of activities for this mission. SLSD supports ongoing objectives from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) related to Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP). Other objectives are related to Expeditionary Medicine and ongoing immunology and nutrition studies.
The NSBRI/BHP objectives today focused on gathering data related to crewmember performance of critical tasks while stressed and fatigued. In the picture below, you see Heide with a Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) device, which measures fatigue. Also visible on the table is a clear bag which their daily saliva samples go into (used to measure cortisol, a stress marker, among other things.)
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Another task related to Expeditionary Medicine (crew health care when they are located on the moon or Mars) was an emergency medical drill performed this morning. With Dr.Josef Schmid proctoring, the other crew members went through a series of medical emergency drills, providing primary care per procedures we plan to use in space. In the process, it provided data to validate revised Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) protocols.
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NEEMO 12 offers a wonderful opportunity for children to learn more about space, nature, science, engineering and medicine. Today about 300 elementary school students and their teachers were invited to tour the Cincinnati Museum Center to participate in a live videoconference with the NEEMO 12 crew in the Aquarius habitat. The crew provided a video tour of the habitat, highlighted some of their research and took questions from students. An afternoon session was open to the general public and featured five local junior high school students who were winners of a robotic competition. These “student-surgeons” drove the robotic controls at the Cincinnati Museum Center, tele-surgically moving the arms of the robot in the undersea habitat. This allowed them to see first hand what it is like to live in such an extreme environment and how robotics can be used to support surgery in the future.
Finally, we made the RAVEN surgical robot do double duty – as a lunar sample manipulator! Shown below is Mary Sue Bell, a planetary geologist from the Asrtomaterials Research and Exploration Sciences (ARES) Directorate at Johnson Space Center, as she tele-robotically manipulates simulated lunar samples inside Aquarius. This objective accomplishes several purposes. First, it demonstrates a multi-utilization of a single piece of robotic equipment; second, it shows one of several ways that lunar samples may be handled in order to avoid unnecessary human contamination. Finally, it demonstrates how scientists on Earth could remotely do sample processing through the night while the crew is asleep. These are all very important considerations for future planetary exploration.
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Thanks for joining us,
-NEEMO 12 Topside Team
Mission Day 3 started off in a sprint. Breakfast and the morning rituals of daily medical and vigilance testing were followed by reconstructing the Raven Robot. Tim and Joe left many of the parts connected overnight to be ready for the robotics competition. Tim and Joe, together with James, converted the bunkroom back into the robotics laboratory. In addition, lots of communication configuration and video connections were routed to ensure that all of the day’s activities would run smoothly, including the remote robotics operations by surgeons at the University of Washington and also students at the Cincinnati Museum Center. In the meantime, other crew members were off doing a variety of other tasks. Our habitat technician Dom scooted out on a “hooka” (a SCUBA regulator that is connected to habitat supplied air umbilical) which allowed him to venture out and do maintenance work around the outside of the habitat. Jose readied the rover for deployment, getting all the computers and controls connected. Then Joe and Jose got the opportunity to become familiar with driving the rover on the ocean sea bed. At the end, Joe was left with a large “squirrel’s nest” of tangled umbilical to unravel. It’s amazing how much 300 feet of umbilical can get fouled up. Something that could easily happen on the moon, and which may not be as easy to detangle without the full assist of gravity (remember lunar gravity is only one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity). But in the end, even though it took three of us to unsnarl the mess, we were successful.
One of the mission objectives for today was to practice a couple of medical emergencies here in Aquarius. All the crew joined in to run the procedures to save an Aquanaut who was simulating a medical ailment and required emergency treatment. In fact, each Space Shuttle mission and International Space Station mission also has either a physician or astronauts who receive basic and emergency medical training. The aquanauts used the same medical checklist that the astronauts use on orbit to practice this morning. In the first scenario, Tim acted as if he had lost consciousness and stopped breathing. Heide, who been trained as a crew medical officer for her Space Shuttle mission last September, and Jose took the team through its paces, following and treating Tim as if he was in dire straits. In the second scenario, Jose acted as if he had inhaled some poisonous gas and then had significant problems breathing. Tim had not seen the astronaut’s checklist but showed the excellent medical training that he has had by also running through the emergency procedures without problems. These same medical emergency drills have now been practiced on orbit on the International Space Station, on the Space Shuttles, on NASA’s zero gravity aircraft (also known as “The Vomit Comet”), up in the Arctic Circle at Devon Island and now, for the first time, on Aquarius!
The middle of the day was highlighted by two education outreach sessions. The first one was tied in with elementary school children at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Then after lunch, the Aquarius Habitat was joined remotely by three groups of grade school students spread all over the nation; schools in New Jersey, New York and California were tied together in a video conference with the NASA Distance Learning Network to join in a tour of the habitat and a great discussion about undersea work, science, robotics and careers at NASA. Several other schools also joined in on the Internet. All the students had great questions about working in the ocean, science and exploration. The aquanaut team really enjoyed seeing the students and their schools. Maybe some of them will someday join us here on Aquarius or even in space!
In the late afternoon, Heide and Joe headed out on an exploration activity dive wearing diving helmets. They were joined by surface divers who usually work at the Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where the astronauts train for their spacewalks building the International Space Station. These divers assisted the aquanauts by strapping on backpacks with special weights that are being used to study the design of the next generation lunar suits. How neat it is to use the ocean to help launch our next return to the moon! Led on by the direction of the intravehicular (IVA) crew member, Jose, Heide and Joe built three more modules to the growing “LunaSea” underwater structure. Building this structure tests the aquanauts’ teamwork and communication as each of the pieces of the structure must fit perfectly into each other piece for it to be correctly constructed. A nurse shark drifted by, likely looking for a moray eel that was living nearby in the coral. Three hours flew by and were ended by Jose’s calling the team back inside after they had retrieved and stored their umbilical lines on the side of Aquarius.
Just before dinner Jose, Joe and Heide finished their daily work of cleaning the diving helmets and all the other gear from the dive, Dom was catching up on the required e-mails, and Tim and James took the Raven Robot apart. Everyone was also busy answering all the medical and performance questionnaires that the researchers requested the aquanauts complete (there is even homework down here in the ocean!). Finally, the “topside teams,” the Mission Control Center of this team and the habitat topside team from NURC joined the aquanauts for the evening teleconference to go over the day’s events, talk about any problems and discuss tomorrow’s activities. More fun to come!
Today at ~ 10:20 am Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper, Jose Hernandez, and Joe Schmid joined an elite group of people in this world who have spent 24 hours under the sea in “saturation”, making them the world’s 3 newest aquanauts. James Talacek, Dominic Landucci, and Tim Broderick of course, were already veteran aquanauts. Heide, by virtue of having flown in space and lived under the sea, becomes the 15th “aquastronaut”!
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Telesurgical robotics represents a new, exciting dimension in healthcare. NEEMO 12 provides an extremely unique platform to test new robotic systems in an extreme environment 50 feet below the ocean surface.
During the NEEMO 12, the team will be conducting a variety of advanced technology experiments including robotic telesurgery. Using two remotely controlled surgical robots, school children in Cincinnati and scientists in Nashville will be able to control the robotic arms of these robots in the Aquarius habitat. The surgical robots are known as the RAVEN from the University of Washington and the M-7 from SRI International. The videoconferencing capabilities are supported by HaiVision Systems, Inc. (Montreal, Canada). In addition to hands-on demonstrations, robotic telesurgery technology tested during the mission will help scientists and surgeons understand the challenges of distance and interplanetary communication time delay. Technologies such as surgeon-guided automatic robot function could improve the care of astronauts on future lunar missions as well as soldiers in the battlefield.
The University of Washington’s (UW) BioRobotics Lab looks at the NEEMO mission as a grand opportunity to test the robustness and capabilities of the RAVEN surgical robot. Supporting us here from UW are Mitch Lum and Diana Friedman. The BioRobotics Lab’s mission is to develop science, technology, and human resources at the interface between robotics and biological movement systems. The goal is to produce useful, innovative research and technology as well as trained researchers fluent in both technological and biological systems, and the tasks they are performing with the RAVEN this week support that objective.
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Finally, the crew was involved in lunar surface exploration activities. Since we can change the “weight” of a crewmember using buoyancy, we can make them feel as if they are in the 1/6 gravity environment of the Moon. That’s a good thing once you add the heavy spacesuits! Their first exploration activity involved picking up a quick surface sample (in case they had to immediately depart), and methodically surveying the working area and marking geological sites of interest so they can return on a future day and do more detailed analyses.
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Thanks for following along.
-NEEMO 12 Topside Team
From the time we got out of our bunks, teeth brushed and had our morning cup of coffee, it was a steady pace to get ready for the work day. The hab techs, James and Dom, were busy getting the habitat ready for the day’s activities, just like the pilot and commander would go through the post-sleep reconfigurations on orbit in the Space Shuttle. While they were busy with their tasks, the rest of the crew were busy getting ready for our mission objectives. Tim and Joe started converting the bunk room from our sleeping quarters into a “robot surgical room.” They were setting up the platform for the University of Washington Raven Robot. There was a large silver table that they had to maneuver into the bunk room to which the robot arms attach. Everything was labeled, and there is a great procedure to follow to build the robot.
Meanwhile, Heide and Jose got dressed again to head out on a coral survey. Additional weights helped to keep them on the bottom while they strolled away from the habitat. The objective of their dive was to survey a given sector and identify and mark an interesting piece of coral, just like an astronaut on the moon would survey the lunar landscape and identify interesting lunar formations. Using a navigation unit, they went out 450 feet away from the habitat out towards a safe haven called the Kamper Station. Five minutes after arriving, Dom sent out an underwater alarm to test the emergency recall signal. The delay of the sound was noticeable. At the Kamper Station, an aquanaut can fill with air, kind of like a filling station in the ocean. Heide and Jose topped off their tanks and began their survey. Because of the limited visibility, Heide set up a line reel while she and Jose explored off the excursion line. Along the route, Heide identified a well camouflaged scorpion fish, in addition to various coral formations. The coral reefs were marked in the navigation unit so that another set of divers can locate the same location on a future dive. During this dive, the two aquanauts wore an outer garment so that they could be weighted down to simulate a space suit on the lunar surface. Jose and Heide really enjoyed the extra weight, as it made them think what it would be like to work on the moon!
Tim had a very challenging day as he connected the myriad of parts and pieces that made up the robot. He dove into the spaghetti of cables and computer connections, one hand on a wrench and the other on a telephone as he coordinated video and sound to the robot. Surgeons from across the country, as near as Key Largo, Florida, and as far away as Seattle, Washington, were able to log in and actuate the two arms of the robot to move pieces in the surgical field. Tim was really working hard to get it all right as today’s exercises were more of a test-run for tomorrow’s activities.
The second EVA event kicked off the initial stages of the Luna Sea construction project. The EVA crew members for this activity were Joe and Jose. After deciding on a well open space for the construction of the multi-story Luna Sea structure, Joe and Jose went right to work on building its base. The first stage pieces were also unpacked with most of the front face assembled. Several fish joined them to supervise. Jose laid out the pieces and Joe went to work joining them with pins and washers. Two surface divers, including Marc Reagan, NEEMO 12 Mission Director, joined as well to take pictures and video. Heide, who was serving as the in-vehicle activity member sent out “Scuttle” the rover to give her also a front seat view of the construction. Two hours literally flew by as Jose and Joe were joining the pieces of the structure as they made sure not to trap their umbilical lines in between two sections. Heide reminded them that their bottom time was indeed limited and called them back to the habitat to make sure that no one exceeded their stay at the deeper depth. Even though the aquanauts are in saturation, they have to pay attention if they go deeper than the habitat depth, just like any other dive. After Joe and Jose made it back to the habitat, wrapping the umbilical lines in figures of eight was made enjoyable by the near weightless conditions of the ocean/simulated lunar surface. Jose and Joe might have had a basketball goal set up to do some “dunks” with their air supply lines jumping literally 10 feet above the bottom neatly wrapping up their work.
The evening was filled with the evening planning conference with topside and our simulated Mission Control, getting dinner, looking at all the photos taken during the day, writing journals, sending e-mail home and listening to Dom’s new collection of hard rock music set to classical instruments.
Good night from 50 feet below the waves! See you on the Internet in the morning.
Your NEEMO 12 Crew
Aquarius Habitat