[meteorite-list] NASA Prepares for Future Space Exploration with International Undersea Crew

[Ron Baalke]

June 24, 2015
RELEASE 15-138

NASA Prepares for Future Space Exploration with International Undersea Crew 

NASA will send an international crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean this 
summer to prepare for future deep space missions during the 14-day NASA 
Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 20 expedition slated to begin 
July 20.

NEEMO 20 will focus on evaluating tools and techniques being tested for 
future spacewalks on a variety of surfaces and gravity levels ranging from 
asteroids to the moons of Mars and the Martian surface.

"The NEEMO team is particularly excited about this mission as it is a huge 
milestone to have achieved 20 missions at Aquarius over the past 15 years," 
NEEMO Project Lead Bill Todd said. 'Living and working in the highly 
operational, isolated and extreme environment of the aquatic realm has 
provided significant science and engineering for the benefit of human 
spaceflight. It has also clearly proven to be as close to spaceflight as is 
possible here on Earth."

The mission will test time delays in communications due to the distance of 
potential mission destinations. The crew also will assess hardware sponsored 
by the European Space Agency (ESA) that allows crew members to read the next 
step in a procedure without taking their hands or eyes away from the task 
using a tablet, a smartphone and a head-mounted interface.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will command the NEEMO 20 mission aboard the 
Aquarius laboratory. Parmitano flew in space during Expeditions 36 and 37 
aboard the International Space Station in 2013, where he spent 166 days 
living and working in the extreme environment of microgravity. He conducted 
two spacewalks on his first spaceflight.

Parmitano will be joined by NASA astronaut Serena Aunon, NASA EVA Management 
Office engineer David Coan and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut 
Norishige Kanai.

The NEEMO crew and two professional habitat technicians will live 62 feet (19 
meters) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in Florida International 
University's Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat 6.2 miles (5.4 
nautical miles) off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.

For more information about NEEMO, the crews and links to follow the mission 
on Facebook and Twitter, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/neemo


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