News
NASA Astronauts to train for spacewalks in underwater mission
NASA are to send an international crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean this month as part of the 14-day expedition called NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 20 (or simply NEEMO 20).
Scheduled to start on the 20th July, NEEMO 20 was designed to help the agency prepare for future missions into deep space and will focus on assessing tools and techniques being developed for future spacewalks across different levels of gravity and types of surfaces on asteroids, moons and even Mars.
According to Bill Todd, project lead for NEEMO, the team is extremely excited about the mission as it represents a big accomplishment to have carried out 20 missions over the last 15 years in the Aquarius.
“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,” he said, adding that NEEMO’s missions were the closest toward simulating spaceflight on Earth.
NEEMO 20 will be testing time delays that may occur in communication lines because of the distance potential mission locations will be in. At the same time, the crew will also be assessing hardware provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) that lets crew members read next steps in procedures without looking away or taking their hands away from their task with help from a head-mounted interface, a smartphone and a tablet.
Luca Parmitano, an astronaut from the ESA, will be commanding the NEEMO 20 mission. In 2013, he flew in space as a crew member of Expeditions 36 and 37 on the International Space Station. There, Parmitano spent 166 days in microgravity, living and working with other astronauts at the ISS. During his first spaceflight, he carried out two spacewalks.
The rest of the crew for the NEEMO 20 mission include Serena Aunon and David Coan from NASA and Norishige Kanai from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Aunon is an astronaut while Coan is an engineer for the agency’s EVA Management Office.
Parmitano, Aunon, Coan and Kanai will be joined by two professional habitat technicians aboard the Aquarius. They will be living 62 feel below the Atlantic Ocean’s surface, with the Florida International University’s undersea research habitat located some 6.2 miles off Florida’s Key Largo coast.
Source: www.techtimes.com
Over the next 12 months, specialist scuba holiday company Dive Worldwide will be supporting Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation with donations collected from client bookings to any one of its stunning dive destinations around the world. The independently-owned operator expects to raise £3000 for the UK charity.
Manager at Dive Worldwide, Phil North, said: “We’re especially excited to work with Bite-Back and support its intelligent, creative and results-driven campaigns to end the UK trade in shark products and prompt a change in attitudes to the ocean’s most maligned inhabitant.”
Bite-Back is running campaigns to hold the media to account on the way it reports shark news along with a brand new nationwide education programme. Last year the charity was credited for spearheading a UK ban on the import and export of shark fins.
Campaign director at Bite-Back, Graham Buckingham, said: “We’re enormously grateful to Dive Worldwide for choosing to support Bite-Back. The company’s commitment to conservation helps set it apart from other tour operators and we’re certain its clients admire and respect that policy. For us, the affiliation is huge and helps us look to the future with confidence we can deliver against key conservation programmes.”
To launch the fundraising initiative, Phil North presented Graham Buckingham with a cheque for £1,000.
Visit Dive Worldwide to discover its diverse range of international scuba adventures and visit Bite-Back to learn more about the charity’s campaigns.
MORE INFORMATION
Call Graham Buckingham on 07810 454 266 or email graham@bite-back.com
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