Finding NEEMO

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/09/2014 (4056 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For filing in the "that’s pretty cool" folder, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen is heading underwater for an entire week on a mission that could simulate gravity conditions on Mars.

Hansen is one of a four-member "aquanaut" crew that will be living and working in the Aquarius habitat in Key Largo, Florida, an ocean laboratory located 20 metres under the surface of the ocean. The lab is usually used by marine biologists but for the next seven days it will be home to a number of NASA experiments as part of NEEMO 19. NEEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.

Hansen, a 37-year-old from Ailsa Craig, Ont., is a former CF-18 fighter pilot who was selected in 2009 through the Canadian astronaut recruitment program. He graduated from NASA’s astronaut training program in 2011 and currently works at NASA’s Mission Control Centre in Houston. He is awaiting his first assignment to travel to space.

Hansen will be the exploration lead on the team, meaning he will oversee the planning and execution of underwater "spacewalks" which will simulat the communications between ground and astronaut crews in space. The walks will including experiments using varying levels of gravity such as that of asteroids, Martian moons and even Mars itself.

The crew has been training since September 1 and headed down into the lab today. They posted a video of training day one. 

According to Hansen’s bio he is learning to speak Russian. Perhaps for this mission he also will learn how to speak whale.