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Hey, I'm Kristin and this is NASA Now, December 14, 2011.
Imagine what it's like to live and work underwater.
That's what members of the NEEMO 15 mission experienced
as they tested concepts in a simulated visit to an asteroid.
We spoke with the project manager
about this next crucial step in NASA's efforts
to expand the horizons of exploration.
That's ahead.
First, here's what's happening at NASA Now.
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NASA spacecraft Dawn continues to give scientists new insights
into the giant asteroid, Vesta.
Data gathered indicates the surface of Vesta is much rougher
than other asteroids in the asteroid belt.
Dawn also discovered that Vesta is home to one
of the largest mountains in the solar system.
This mountain is estimated to be 22 kilometers higher
than the surrounding terrain.
To bring that down to Earth, most commercial airplanes fly
at an altitude of around nine kilometers.
The mountain on Vesta is more than twice this height.
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To learn more about why NASA is conducting missions beneath the
surface of the Atlantic ocean,
we caught up with the project manager
for the NEEMO 15 mission.
NEEMO is the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.
In it is a team of people that comes to the field, in this case
to an undersea habitat, to execute a mission
with an astronaut crew in an environment that we try to make
as space-like as possible.
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Aquarius is an undersea habitat that's about the same size
of a school bus interior.
We have a kitchen and bunkroom and all of that.
The habitat sits on the sea floor at 62-feet, but the depth
that we're living at, which we call the hatch-depth,
the depth at which we go in and out of the water, is 48-feet.
Our missions in Aquarius with our crews last
from anywhere from 10 to 14 days.
At the end of the 14-day time period, you would have to go
through a 15-hour decompression to come to the surface
where we would slowly equalize the pressure of the habitat
with the surface pressure.
That's a lot like space.
When you're in space and you're on the space station,
for instance, and you have an emergency,
it takes about 15 hours for you to come back to Earth.
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The focus on this particular mission is
about exploration concepts for living
and working on an asteroid.
Living and working on an asteroid is a bit challenging
because there's a total absence of gravity.
Meaning that you're in microgravity
and you can't walk along the surface, like you could
on the moon or Mars or here on Earth.
So, what we're doing is we're testing out all different types
of anchors that can either screw into the sea floor or to screw
into the planetary surface or they could magnetically hook
to the surface, or we use rock-climbing type of equipment.
All different ways and concepts just to try
and get an early look at how it might work on an asteroid.
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During the NEEMO mission we're going
to use two deepworker submersibles,
and these are really great mini submarines that we use
as an analog for a rover that we'd use
on a planetary surface such as an asteroid.
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I think the public has a kind of a misconception in that
at NASA we're all about just putting people in space
and really it's so much broader than that.
And as you can tell from this program,
we're also putting people undersea, and it enables a lot
of different people with a wide background of experience
to be able to work from NASA.
Whether you're an educator or an engineer or you're an instructor
or you're a medical doctor,
there's all types of opportunity.
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Check out the Prospecting on Asteroids activity
on the Virtual Campus.
Your mission is to design and construct an edible asteroid.
Then draw a map, illustrate a core sample,
and report your findings just like future astronauts will do
when exploring near-Earth asteroids.
For more mission details look for this activity
on the NASA Explorer Schools' Virtual Campus.
That's it for this NASA Now, be sure to visit our Facebook page
and let us know what you think.
See you then on NASA Now.
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NASA Now comes to you from the Virtual Campus
at NASA Explorer Schools.