NEEMO Underwater Astronauts Training Due to Begin

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is to lead NASA’s 20th underwater astronaut training mission this month.

Starting on 20 July, the 14-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations sortie, or NEEMO, will see a team of four living and working in the Aquarius underwater research station off the coast of Florida, USA.

Luca’s crewmates will be NASA astronaut Serena Aunon, NASA spacewalk specialist David Coan and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai. For two weeks they will live and work almost 20 m underwater to test tools and techniques for spacewalks as they venture outside the base in full scuba gear, ESA wrote.

By adjusting their buoyancy, the aquanauts can simulate the gravity levels found on the Moon, Mars and asteroids.

Luca is an experienced spacewalker who ventured outside of the International Space Station twice during his six-month mission in 2013. His second spacewalk was cut short as water built up in his helmet from a problem in his spacesuit.

Luca commented on the announcement of his commanding role for this year’s NEEMO: “Astronauts and a lot of water – my kind of environment!”

Last year ESA astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Andreas Mogensen spent time underwater and this year’s NEEMO will continue to find ways to improve coping with communication time delays due to the distance of potential destinations.

The aquanauts will further test ESA devices. A wearable ‘mobile procedure viewer’– mobiPV – gives astronauts mobile access to hands-free instructions with audio and video that only they hear and see, while mission control looks over their shoulder and offers advice.

“You could say that this underwater test of mobiPV is a rehearsal for the version that will fly to the International Space Station in September for Andreas Mogensen’s mission,” explains ESA’s Mikael Wolff.

Luca and his colleagues will test mobiPV by running the Skin-B experiment.