This will be my final journal entry.
Tomorrow, I will leave Habitat Aquarius with mixed emotions.
It has been 40 years since I last lived under water, and I believe I have missed it.
It will be a life time before I again live under water, and I believe I will miss it.
And most of all, I will miss James and Billy, Cady and Mike, and our faithful mission commander Bob.
Greetings!
NEEMO 7 is almost in the history books. We have had a very successful and rewarding mission, and have demonstrated that tele-mentored and tele-robotic surgery can be accomplished even in some of the most extreme environments on earth. At the same time, we’ve been able to exercise many different concepts and techniques that may be useful in taking NASA on to bolder adventures at the Moon and Mars. But the clock is running out, and today marked what we call “deco” day.
As you now know, the crew has spent the last 9 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. In order to return to the surface, they will have to go thru a 16+ hour process called “decompression” or “deco”. This is a very safe procedure which is accomplished in several steps:
- The crew breathes pure oxygen for 3 short intervals to help decrease or “washout” the nitrogen in their blood;
- 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
- 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 ~ 9:00 am on Thursday, where we (the Topside Team) will be waiting on the boat to take them home under the expert supervision of Mike Birns, Day Boat Science coordinator.
When we get back tomorrow, the crew will get a chance to relax and enjoy the fresh air. They’re prohibited from leaving the area for 24 hrs – 48 hrs if leaving by air (which they all are.) This gives the doc a chance to closely observe them for any signs of decompression problems, and treat them immediately if any show up. That’s just a precaution, though – this approach to decompression has been done hundreds of times successfully so far and is considered to be quite safe and conservative. They’re not really supposed to leave the base tomorrow, but we’ve arranged for their docs – Dr. Gerard DeMers, on loan from the US Navy, and Dr. Jean-Marc Comtois, from CSA – to accompany them to lunch tomorrow so they can have some “real” food. They’ll spend the afternoon relaxing, washing clothes, and packing up (and hopefully helping us pack all this stuff we have to ship back to Houston!) In the evening we’ll have the traditional “Splashup” party with our NURC hosts to celebrate the successful conclusion of the mission.
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 NASA/CSA/CMAS crewmembers, and they take great care of our Topside team and visitors. So to the habitat technicians, Billy Cooksey and James Talacek – a hearty “thank you” from us for teaching our crewmembers how to live as aquanauts. To Mark “Otter” Hulsbeck and Ross Hein, a sincere thanks for the great training you gave them. To Jim Buckley and Craig Cooper, thanks for managing these missions so professionally. For Kea Foreman and Dominic Landucci, a special thanks for all the time you put into making it possible for Aquarius to meet all the demanding technical requirements of this mission. And for the rest of the Aquarius side staff who potted daily, manned the watchdesk 24/7, and did it all with a smile, we can’t thank you enough. Finally, a special and sincere thanks to Otto, Mike, and Brady for being our boat captains for the last 3 weeks. We couldn’t have done it without you all.
Thanks for following along.
- NEEMO 7 Topside Team
For me, the last couple of days have been life changing.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak to two astronauts currently traveling at Mach 25 on the space station.
Today, I had the opportunity to speak to Michael DeBakey, a pioneering cardiac surgeon.
This evening, I had the opportunity to speak to my wife and daughter, the most important people in my life.
And for the last ten days, I have had the opportunity to get to know 5 of the finest people I have ever met.
It is clear to me, more now than ever, that the richness of any moment comes from the people in that moment. While technology may enable us to experience moments of unusual magnitude, it is the people in those moments that make them rich.
From this I have come to believe that where ever human kind explores, whether it be in the frontiers of medicine, the frontiers of our terrestrial world, the frontiers of our extra-terrestrial world, or our own back yards, we can not take the humans out of human exploration.
While our technology may enable us to explore our universe, it is the exploring human beings who will make that exploration rich and therefore meaningful.
As Neil Armstrong pointed out “That’s one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind”.
The NEEMO 7 mission experienced one more hardware malfunction. Today one of the hand controllers for the Robo experiment misbehaved.
The Robo hardware performed well a few days ago when we performed the experiment early in the NEEMO 7 mission. Today James Talacek and Billy Cooksey were scheduled to perform their second session of Robo. This is the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) experiment designed to measure degradation of robotic control skills (i.e., hand-eye coordination) in astronauts and other robotic operators.
Before beginning the actual experiment, the two hand controllers for the Robo experiment had to be calibrated. In other words, the experiment computer needed to understand what the ‘zero’ position was for each of the hand controllers. When Mike Barratt performed the calibration early this morning, he noted that the controller for the right hand calibrated nominally but the one for the left did not. Specifically, a downward deflection of the left hand controller was not recognized by the computer.
There are some hardware failures that a crew can attempt to fix, but others that we can’t. After discussing this issue with the Topside Support Team, it was decided to “pot” up the Robo hardware to the surface this afternoon and have the support team attempt to repair or replace the mischievous hand controller.
It was fun to watch James and Billy complete their first Robo session aboard Aquarius several days ago. Neither of them have extensive experience operating robots but they participated in the experiment with enthusiasm. The basic task of the person performing the Robo experiment is to grapple a virtual free-floating satellite with the Canadarm2. That shouldn’t be too difficult a task except that this virtual satellite is slowly tumbling. The tumble makes the task challenging.
James and Billy crashed the Canadarm2 into the satellite on several occasions during their initial trials and we had a good laugh. Toward the end of their Robo sessions, however, they were becoming proficient. They are both quick learners (and I discovered from their banter, hooting and hollering that they are also quite competitive with each other in a good-hearted way).
The robotic operating skills of James, Billy and my other aquanaut colleagues as measured several days ago is not important. What is important is the comparison of our skill levels as measured during this mission to our skill level to be re-measured several weeks from now. The CSA wishes to know over what time period a person’s skills will deteriorate. The results of this experiment will help the CSA decide when an astronaut aboard the International Space Station will need onboard refresher training and how this training should be provided.
So the Robo hardware failure was a bit of a setback. But we will bounce back. My friend, Marc Garneau, once told me that hardware problems and human errors during spaceflight are inevitable. The fact that they occur is not as important as our reaction to them. I have faith in the resolve of my CSA colleagues to find a way to repair or replace the faulty Robo hand controller. I would love to see the Robo team collect all of their data, and I know that James and Billy are chomping at the bit to grapple the satellite one more time.
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.