Aquanauts to simulate asteroid interception
BY STEVE GIBBS Free Press Staff
sgibbs@keysnews.com
[SIZE=+0]KEY LARGO -- Last Thursday evening at dusk, a group of astronauts, engineers, astronomers, doctors and professional divers sat on the outside deck at Snapper's Waterfront Restaurant and, with the lights dimmed, watched a tiny blip of light -- the International Space Station -- pass by overhead.
"There are astronauts from three countries up there. It was a special moment to sit there with everyone pointing into the sky," said Steve Squyres, 55, a Cornell University professor of astronomy and NASA aquanaut.
The space station above is a lofty mirror to the mission for which Squyres and five others were preparing. They were to leave the surface world on Monday to spend up to three weeks 62 feet under water out on the edge of the coral reef in the 400-square-foot Aquarius research station. The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, known as NEEMO, has trained aquanauts here for 15 years and is preparing a team that may some day be assigned to intercept an asteroid in deep space.
"I was asked to participate in the project," said Squyres, who is the scientific principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. "Our mission is to study the geology of an asteroid."
The project is inspired by President Barack Obama's proposed 2025 deadline for NASA to land humans on an asteroid. Such an endeavor would likely take man into deep space where radiation from the sun can make an astronaut sick and re-entry would require a heat barrier much stronger than that of the retired Space Shuttle vehicles. But those risks might someday save the planet.
Asteroids have struck the Earth before. Scientists believe a six-mile-long asteroid hurtling through space at 18,000 mph collided with the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The movie "Armageddon" took the notion out of the darkness and placed it brightly in the public psyche. The National Research Council estimates that an asteroid big enough to wipe out cities strikes the Earth every 30,000 years.
"There is no asteroid that we know of now that is on a trajectory to strike Earth," Squyres said. "That's not to say it won't happen. It has happened. In some far-off time, it will happen again unless man is prepared to stop it."
Squyres said the work he is doing now is for that future.
"I don't ever expect to step on an asteroid. I'm 55 years old and will be 70 by 2025," he said. "But we will build knowledge and pass it on to the next generation, and so on, so that we will be ready when the time comes, if it comes.
"Call it a planetary defense," he added.
Dr. Shannon Walker, 51, will lead the NEEMO 15 mission. She is one of four Americans, a Canadian and a Japanese scientist who will simulate measuring, probing and surviving the elements on an asteroid in deep space while working and training below the water.
Walker flew in space in June 2010 as flight engineer on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, TMA-19, for a long duration mission aboard the International Space Station. The mission lasted 163 days, 161 of them aboard the station.
The NEEMO crew includes Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, both members of the 2009 NASA astronaut class.
Rounding out the crew is James Talacek and Nate Bender of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Both are professional aquanauts.
The Aquarius module where they live, while they are not in the water, consists of three elements: a life-support buoy at the surface, the habitat module and a base that secures the habitat to the ocean floor.
Because of the risk of decompression sickness, also known as "the bends," combined with the fact that the habitat will be anchored 62-feet below the surface about 3.5 miles offshore, aquanauts will rely on saturation diving to work and live underwater for days or weeks at a time.
"There will be a lot of training and we are all fairly experienced divers, but working on an asteroid requires room. We're using the bottom of the ocean which is a great way to simulate the conditions we would encounter at an asteroid," Squyres said. "We will use a small sub to simulate a small space module. We will experiment with thruster packs as well."
The divers are expected to emerge during the first week of November.
Safe dives
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BY STEVE GIBBS Free Press Staff
sgibbs@keysnews.com
[SIZE=+0]KEY LARGO -- Last Thursday evening at dusk, a group of astronauts, engineers, astronomers, doctors and professional divers sat on the outside deck at Snapper's Waterfront Restaurant and, with the lights dimmed, watched a tiny blip of light -- the International Space Station -- pass by overhead.
"There are astronauts from three countries up there. It was a special moment to sit there with everyone pointing into the sky," said Steve Squyres, 55, a Cornell University professor of astronomy and NASA aquanaut.
The space station above is a lofty mirror to the mission for which Squyres and five others were preparing. They were to leave the surface world on Monday to spend up to three weeks 62 feet under water out on the edge of the coral reef in the 400-square-foot Aquarius research station. The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, known as NEEMO, has trained aquanauts here for 15 years and is preparing a team that may some day be assigned to intercept an asteroid in deep space.
"I was asked to participate in the project," said Squyres, who is the scientific principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. "Our mission is to study the geology of an asteroid."
The project is inspired by President Barack Obama's proposed 2025 deadline for NASA to land humans on an asteroid. Such an endeavor would likely take man into deep space where radiation from the sun can make an astronaut sick and re-entry would require a heat barrier much stronger than that of the retired Space Shuttle vehicles. But those risks might someday save the planet.
Asteroids have struck the Earth before. Scientists believe a six-mile-long asteroid hurtling through space at 18,000 mph collided with the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The movie "Armageddon" took the notion out of the darkness and placed it brightly in the public psyche. The National Research Council estimates that an asteroid big enough to wipe out cities strikes the Earth every 30,000 years.
"There is no asteroid that we know of now that is on a trajectory to strike Earth," Squyres said. "That's not to say it won't happen. It has happened. In some far-off time, it will happen again unless man is prepared to stop it."
Squyres said the work he is doing now is for that future.
"I don't ever expect to step on an asteroid. I'm 55 years old and will be 70 by 2025," he said. "But we will build knowledge and pass it on to the next generation, and so on, so that we will be ready when the time comes, if it comes.
"Call it a planetary defense," he added.
Dr. Shannon Walker, 51, will lead the NEEMO 15 mission. She is one of four Americans, a Canadian and a Japanese scientist who will simulate measuring, probing and surviving the elements on an asteroid in deep space while working and training below the water.
Walker flew in space in June 2010 as flight engineer on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, TMA-19, for a long duration mission aboard the International Space Station. The mission lasted 163 days, 161 of them aboard the station.
The NEEMO crew includes Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, both members of the 2009 NASA astronaut class.
Rounding out the crew is James Talacek and Nate Bender of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Both are professional aquanauts.
The Aquarius module where they live, while they are not in the water, consists of three elements: a life-support buoy at the surface, the habitat module and a base that secures the habitat to the ocean floor.
Because of the risk of decompression sickness, also known as "the bends," combined with the fact that the habitat will be anchored 62-feet below the surface about 3.5 miles offshore, aquanauts will rely on saturation diving to work and live underwater for days or weeks at a time.
"There will be a lot of training and we are all fairly experienced divers, but working on an asteroid requires room. We're using the bottom of the ocean which is a great way to simulate the conditions we would encounter at an asteroid," Squyres said. "We will use a small sub to simulate a small space module. We will experiment with thruster packs as well."
The divers are expected to emerge during the first week of November.
Safe dives
Trtldvr
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