Mission & Project Info | NOAA’s Aquarius Undersea Laboratory
Mission Blog

Aquarius’ second mission of 2010 concluded successfully on Sunday May 23rd, 2010 with recovery of the aquanauts and shutdown of the habitat and support facilities. This mission was a collaboration with the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) as part of its NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) program. Two astronauts, Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and Thomas Marshburn or NASA, and two Ph.D. Scientists, Andrew Abercromby and Steve Chappell, both from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, joined habitat technicians James Talacek and Nathan Bender in the habitat on this mission.

The Aquarius team began preparing for the mission months ahead of time with the construction of mockups of the type of Lander, Rover, Airlock and Ascent Modules that might be used in space exploration. The mockups were installed on the sea floor and the habitat was prepared in the weeks leading up to the mission.

Training began on May 4th and lasted 4 days covering habitat procedures and umbilical diving using diving helmets. During training week, NASA’s Mobile Mission Control Center was setup and integrated with Aquarius systems to allow display of diver, habitat and exterior cameras as well as access to network and communications systems.

The Aquarius crew, joined by divers from Florida State University and the U.S. Navy worked throughout training week and into the weekend making final preparations before some much needed rest on Sunday May 9th.

Monday saw the habitat technicians enter the habitat early to power systems up and run final pre-mission checks. By mid day, the NASA aquanauts had entered the habitat and the saturation mission was in progress.
Monday afternoon saw familiarization dives with the NASA aquanauts out on umbilical excursions with Superlite 17 diving helmets.

On Tuesday, the regular routine of morning and afternoon excursions began, with two aquanauts out in the morning and two in the afternoon. Tuesday and Wednesday saw work with the Lander and Rover mockups wearing backpacks designed to create varying centers of gravity, while on Thursday the focus shifted to working with the Air Lock and Ascent Module mockups as well as deploying the Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV). Friday and Saturday were back with the Rover mockup and concluded with all NASA Aquanauts participating in a night dive on Saturday night.

The topside support crew, with Aquarius, FSU, Navy and NASA divers supported the aquanauts heavily on the first two days as the aquanauts conducted their studies. Support operations changed significantly by Thursday, however, as Habitat Technician Nate Bender began providing primary support for the NASA aquanauts during both morning and afternoon excursions; logging nearly 6 hours of dive time each day.

Sunday, May 16th, was a rest day in the habitat with no diving and a relatively restful day for the support crew.
On Monday full diving activities resumed with morning and afternoon excursions. Monday and Tuesday saw aquanauts again working with the Rover and Lander while wearing Center of Gravity (CG) rigs while on Wednesday the focus returned to the Air Lock and Ascent Modules. Thursday and Friday saw a significant change to the excursions as the 200 foot excursion umbilicals were replaced with 400 foot umbilicals and the aquanauts went on long exploratory excursions. On Friday, in a final effort, the aquanauts practiced deploying the Rover from the Lander Deck to the sea floor using the Lander’s large davit. Friday night involved a second set of night time excursions.

Saturday began with preparations for decompression. By 3 pm, Decompression Technician Justin Brown had joined the aquanauts in the habitat and starting at 4 pm he managed the sixteen and a half hour decompression process.

Decompression was completed and aquanauts were beginning the process of exiting the habitat by eight-thirty on Sunday Morning. After a few more hours of clean up and demobilizing by the support crew, another successful mission was completed thanks to the combined efforts of all who participated.

What a great day down here in Aquarius. It was a typical NEEMO day. Lots of good data collected during the EVAs and some very cool education outreach events.

The commander pulled out his collapsible guitar which was last played on the Mir Space Station, very cool!
During one of the outreach events he demonstrated what happens to a can of Pringles when they aren’t properly vented before being sent down to Aquarius. Although they started out as potato chips, they ended up as potato bits. The increased pressure inside Aquarius crushed the can since it was a sealed container. It served as a great learning tool for the school children that were taking apart in the event.

The EVAs were very productive. Andrew and Steve opted to extend their dives by one hour to achieve the mission objectives. Although I have not been able to join them on the EVAs, I constantly monitor their audio, dive helmet cameras and other situational cameras. The work the team is doing is great to watch and I feel a great sense of pride of being a part of the NEEMO 14 team.

My favorite part of day 9 though was the fact that we aren’t in decompression. The majority of Aquarius missions are ten days long, so decompression normally starts on “day 9”. Since this is a 14 day mission we won’t start decompression until day 13. So that means I still have 4 more days before my “living the dream” experience starts to come to an end.

Good night from Conch Reef.

James Talacek
Habitat Tech

Mission day 8 draws to a close and it is clear to see that we still have some of the coolest jobs on and off the planet. The best thing about being down here with so many different personalities is getting to know them. One of my favorite things to do in life is to laugh, and with this bunch of guys, that’s an easy thing to do. I’m going to fill you in on what I have observed and the titles I’ve given out (only my opinion, not Aquarius’s and most definitely not NASA’s).

You have two PhD’s, one MD, one Colonel, and two red necks (one which graduated in knight skool). The only thing more intimidating is a planetary geologist (xoxoMSB). I have to be honest though, these are easy going, humble guys with great stories to tell. I estimate that we spend about half of the time laughing, and the other half laughing at James or myself; funny how the laughs are directed at the two lesser educated guys, right? No hard feelings, though, because if you can’t laugh at yourself, what good are you. It’s been great hearing the background stories on these fine gentlemen, where they’ve been, what they have seen, how many times their guitar has been around the world, how many hits they have on Google, how many dummies they’ve hauled up a rope, or even how many “tinnies” they’ve tanned while trying to hone their fake Scottish accent. On the serious side, these guys are truly amazing. Their lives are rich, interesting, and would make many green with envy. Gentlemen, somewhere out there is a child calling you hero, and changing their dreams to follow in your footsteps…my hat’s off to you; and James, Hot Chops.

Nate Bender
Habitat Tech

NEEMO 14 training began today! While you wait for fresh photos from this week, take a look at some photos from the NEEMO 10 mission in July 2006.

While we’re gearing up for the NEEMO 14 mission (May 10), we thought we’d share some photos from a very successful NEEMO 9 mission back in April 2006. Telerobotic surgery, ROVs, cool diving shots…check it out!