Session 7 Global Citizenry | TEKTITE2020 Women of Sea and Space

July 18 2020: 13:30-13:45

Dr. Shirley Pomponi: Aquanaut NEEMO 23 all-women crew

Aquanauts during NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations NEEMO 23 which simulates space exploration focusing on future lunar missions. ©NASA

Dr. Shirley Pomponi joined NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) is the 23rd in the history of Aquarius Reef Base but the first since Hurricane Irma idled the world’s only undersea research laboratory in 2017. NEEMO 23 focused on exploration spacewalks and training for missions to the moon and Mars. As an analogue for future planetary science concepts and strategies, the crew also installed a coral nursery.

June 10-19 2019: NEEMO 23 An all-female astronaut and science crew included Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from the Italian European Space Agency. She held the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight of a European astronaut and until June 2017, held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman. Jessica Watkins, PhD, NASA astronaut candidate, Csilla Ari D’Agostino, PhD, research assistant professor of neurosciences in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Florida (USF), and Shirley Pomponi, Ph.D., research professor at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (FAU Harbor Branch).

July 18 2020: 13:45-14:00

Dr. Grace Young: Aquanaut Mission 31 for Cousteau 50th

Grace Young and a fellow diver record a feeding mantis shrimp with the Edgertronic high-speed camera. Photo: Mission 31

Grace joined a unique 31-day research and education outreach mission spearheaded by ocean explorer and documentary filmmaker Fabien Cousteau. The Mission 31 expedition was conceived as an homage to the first underwater living experiments in the Red Sea 50 years ago pioneered by Cousteau’s grandfather, the legendary French ocean explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau. (Mission 31 was so named because it would last one day longer than that first expedition in 1963.) A team of filmmakers and researchers dove to Aquarius with Cousteau on June 1. After 15 days, the FIU researchers traded places with researchers from Northeastern University.

“Marine life is a very complex ecosystem that’s finely balance between predator and prey. Using the high-speed Edgertronic camera, we can see and evaluate the behavior of prey in the immediate vicinity of a predator in the nanoseconds before capture or escape… While this won’t solve our more pressing problems from global warming, acidification, pollution, overfishing, etc., it still adds to our body of knowledge that hopefully will lead to more universal sensitivity toward our fellow creatures on Earth.”

July 18 2020: 14:00-14:15

Nicole Stott: Aquanaut NEEMO 9 - Mission Specialist

Astronaut Nicole P. Stott, NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations NEEMO 9: A cooperative project between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of North Carolina, Wilmington (UNCW) and the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery Canada. ©NASA

In 2006, Nicole was a member of the 6-person crew of the NEEMO 9 mission where she lived and worked with her crew in saturation for 18 days on the Aquarius undersea research habitat - the longest Aquarius saturation mission to date. The deployment and operation of teleoperated surgical systems and semi-autonomous, supervisory-controlled tasks were successfully conducted.

Almost every aspect of this mission has robotics involved in some way. The telemedicine side of it, we’re going to be hands-on using robots to assist us with arthroscopic surgery on these models of knees that we’ll have. We’ll be doing that with mentoring from a physician and a surgeon in Canada that’s remotely located. Then, to extend that even more, we’ll have the robotics set up, the surgical equipment set up so that that same surgeon can perform the surgery from Canada on the model that we have set up in the habitat...

July 18 2020: 14:30-14:45

Dr. Shawna Pandya: Honourary Aquanaut Dive Medicine

Dr Shawna Pandya, WEM Dive Medicine - August 2019. Photo credits: FIU.

The Dive Medicine course trains physicians and healthcare professionals to recognise, evaluate and treat diving medical and hyperbaric emergencies in one of the world’s most unique locations – Aquarius Reef Base. In addition to lectures on the physiology and medicine of diving, you’ll receive highly practical experience operating and working hyperbaric recompression chambers, and the use of commercial and military diving equipment, which will include an introduction to scientific, hard hat and saturation diving. At the conclusion of this course, participants will have a working knowledge to evaluate and manage diving medicine injuries in an operational environment. Plus, all course attendees will receive a Diver Medic Technician qualification issued by the National Board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medical Technology.

“Also, you end the week with the title ‘Honorary Aquanaut’, which is a pretty standout achievement!”

July 18 2020: 14:15-14:30

Andrea Boyd: From ESA Eurocom to NEEMO Mission Control

NEEMO mission control. NEEMO 22, the 22nd NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations mission, consists of astronauts, technicians and scientists in the Aquarius underwater habitat off the coast of Florida. A team of divers support the mission above ground acting as mission control as well as in the water as support divers. Complementing the NASA team are ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who flew to the Space Station in 2015 and also a veteran aquanaut, ESA astronaut trainer Hervé Stevenin and ESA Eurocom Andrea Boyd, Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide is also joining as Capcom. ©NASA

“Topside” mission control sees the mission director, capcom, planning, EVA and science rep backed up by a 24/7 “watch desk” inside and two science trailers in the carpark. The European Space Agency (ESA) deployed their new Lunar Evacuation System Assembly (LESA), something that the Apollo missions were lacking. This brilliant feat of engineering allows a single person to secure and evacuate an incapacitated crew member on the moon and has been tested in the European astronaut centre’s neutral buoyancy facility.

My day job is Eurocom for the International Space Station (ISS), working hundreds of different science experiments and systems engineering with the astronauts in their packed 12-hour workdays on orbit. ISS has five mission controls: Houston, Huntsville, Munich, Moscow and Tsukuba. At each mission control only one flight controller position can talk back to the astronauts when they call Earth, and frequently Europe replies with a distinctly Australian accent – mine. After years of talking up to space, my voice now also travels down below the Atlantic Ocean.

July 18 2020: 14:45-15:00

Dr. Sarah Jane Pell: MoonWalk/Dive Simulation Astronaut

Sarah Jane Pell, Project MOONWALK European Lunar Analogue Human-Robotic Undersea Trials, Gandolfi II in Marseille Bay, FR 2016. Photo: Comex S.A.

Project Moonwalk Subsea trials included the operation of the Gandolfi-2 EVA simulation spacesuit; use of manual tools for geological sampling; operation of the "Yemo" assistant-robot; use of the MMI robot control sub-system and a data interface; EVA Information System spacesuit computerisation exchange with MCC and Robot operations; Biomonitoring and live communications with the Mission Control Centre, Bremmen, and local Base CapCom. Simulation Astronaut Pell supported new and practical methods for the interactions between astronauts and robots in a subsea analogue site to the Moon off the coast of Marseille, and in preliminary tests of the Comex, S.A. pool.

The underwater weight of this suit simulator is equivalent to the weight of an astronaut wearing an EVA suit on the moon and it has been used during previous underwater testing, including the Apollo 11 Under the Sea mission off the shore of Marseille France in 2013, and the three-year Moondive study towards integrated LESA trials at ESA's astronaut centre in Cologne.

The Age of Aquarius