[meteorite-list] NASA Announces 16th Undersea Exploration Mission Dates and Crew

[Ron Baalke]

April 16, 2012

Michael Braukus 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1979 
michael.j.braukus at nasa.gov 

Brandi Dean 
Johnson Space Center, Houston 
281-483-5111 
brandi.k.dean at nasa.gov 

RELEASE: 12-116

NASA ANNOUNCES 16TH UNDERSEA EXPLORATION MISSION DATES AND CREW

WASHINGTON -- An international team of aquanauts will travel again to 
the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to simulate a visit to an asteroid 
in the 16th expedition of NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 
(NEEMO). 

This year's NEEMO mission will begin June 11. It will build on lessons 
learned from 2011's NEEMO 15 mission and test innovative solutions to 
engineering challenges allowing astronauts to eventually explore 
asteroids. 

"We're trying to look out into the future and understand how we'd 
operate on an asteroid," said Mike Gernhardt, NASA astronaut and 
NEEMO principal investigator. "You don't want to make a bunch of 
guesses about what you'll need and then get to the asteroid to find 
out it won't work the way you thought it would. NEEMO helps give us 
the information we need to make informed decisions now." 

This NEEMO expedition will focus on three areas: communication delays, 
restraint and translation techniques, and optimum crew size. The crew 
of four will spend 12 days living 63 feet below the Atlantic Ocean's 
surface on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 
Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat off the coast of Key 
Largo, Fla. 

NASA astronaut and former space shuttle crew member Dottie M. 
Metcalf-Lindenburger will lead the crew. She will be joined by fellow 
astronauts Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and 
Timothy Peake of the European Space Agency and Cornell University 
professor Steven Squyres, who was also a NEEMO 15 crew member. 

To request interviews with the NEEMO 16 crew during the mission, 
contact Brandi Dean of NASA at brandi.k.dean at nasa.gov, Rosita Suenson 
of the European Space Agency at Rosita.Suenson at esa.int, Akiko Niizeki 
of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at niizeki.akiko at jaxa.jp or 
Fred Gorell of NOAA at fred.gorell at noaa.gov. 

The NEEMO mission is sponsored by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems 
Program. For more information about NEEMO and the crew and links to 
follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/neemo 

For more information about NASA analog field tests, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs 
	
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