The OpenROV (in blue) Moving Over Aquarius. Image: OpenROV

The name Nemo automatically brings to mind visions of the deep for many people. From the infamous anti-hero captain in Jules Vernes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea to the lovable lost clown fish in Pixars Finding Nemo, the name has become linked to life in the ocean. For a dedicated team from a number of backgrounds, interests, and organizations, the name is linked to both the ocean and space exploration.

There is a project, coordinated by NASA, called the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO. I have spent the past week working in the NEEMO environment and it has been amazing. My work here was related to capturing part of the link NASA provides to monitoring the oceans along with the satellite program I am working on now called the Joint Polar Satellite System. I captured a great deal of incredible information and footage for my project but I want to take the time to educate our readers on NEEMO, the incredible work being done on the project, and the other amazing teams I was working alongside.

NEEMO is what NASA calls an Analog Mission. During an Analog Mission, a crew is put into a simulated mission under an environment simulating some of the conditions of a space mission while a Mission Control team works with the crew in a Mission Control Center, or MCC. The fact that this is an Analog Mission is an important distinction. There are a number of ways to test in conditions specifically analogous to spaceflight such as g-forces in a centrifuge or different pressure conditions in test chambers. The Analog Missions are important in that they are a simulation of the full end-to-end space mission. The crew is working for multiple days in an extreme environment and communicating with Mission Control in a way that is very similar to working on flying mission.

The Aquarius Reef Base during the NEEMO 14 Mission Image: NASA

The NEEMO Analog Missions are centered around the Aquarius Reef Base off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. The Aquarius Reef Base is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The Aquarius Base is an 85-ton habitat that supports a crew of up to six Aquanauts. Aquarius sits in about 62 feet of water in a sandy section of Conch Reef in the protected Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The habitat is pressurized to over twice normal atmospheric pressure both to keep the Aquanauts equalized to the water pressure at that depth and to allow for a moon pool where the Aquanauts can enter and leave the habitat without airlocks or hatches. Remember The Abyss? It is kind of like that but at 62 feet. On the surface, there is a large buoy called the Life Support Buoy, or LSB, which provides power generation, air compressors, communications, and other support equipment. At the end of a stay on Aquarius, since the Aquanauts are saturated at the pressure of 2.5 atmospheres, they undergo an almost 16 hour decompression process to bring them safely back to normal atmospheric conditions.

The Aquarius Life Support Buoy & Support Ships Image: Brian McLaughlin

When the NASA NEEMO team uses Aquarius for a mission they send a crew down consisting of astronauts and other personnel to work in the extreme environment and simulate a space mission. The extreme environment provides conditions where the crew lives in isolation and have to appropriately equip themselves for work outside the habitat. NEEMO places additional equipment around Aquarius to aid in the mission simulation. Back in Key Largo, a large, well-equipped trailer is brought in for the Mission Control end of the simulation. Called the Mobile Mission Control Center, or MMCC, the trailer provides an amazingly accurate Mission Control atmosphere. During mission operations, additional divers also go down to support different aspects of the mission, making for an amazing sight with the support divers and Aquanauts all working together in an well-choreographed dance.

NASA Mobile Mission Command Center Image: Brian McLaughlin

The current mission is NEEMO 16 and runs from this past Monday till the end of next week. During NEEMO 16, the team is simulating a mission to land on an asteroid. They are practicing a number of techniques for moving around the asteroid environment, such as moving from workstation to workstation, testing tools for different uses, and other activities. The communications loop with the MMCC is delayed to simulate the communications lag due to the speed of light a mission will encounter working on an asteroid. What makes NEEMO such a great place to run tests described above is the ability to provide feedback on a particular tool or procedure to the surface team, make modifications, and try the modifications the next day. It is an amazing rapid prototyping environment that is like a Hackathon on the ocean floor.

Continue reading here:

NASA's NEEMO: Bringing Space to the Deep