Table of Contents

NEEMO 15 - Overview

Mission Facts

• 15th NEEMO mission (first ever NEEMO mission was in 2001)
• Splashdown: October 20, 2011
• Return: October 26, 2011

The Crew

• David Saint-Jacques, CSA Astronaut
• Shannon Walker, NEEMO 15 Commander, NASA astronaut
• Takuya Onishi, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut
• Steven Squyres, Professor at Cornell University
• James Talacek, Aquanaut, University of North Carolina Wilmington
• Nate Bender, Aquanaut, University of North Carolina Wilmington

The Habitat Aquarius

• Located: about 19 metres below the surface, 5.6 km off Key Largo in the Florida Keys.
• Aquarius itself, a 3-by-14-metre steel cylinder, provides 11 cubic metres of living and laboratory space for a six-person crew. The lab is equipped with computers linked to shore, as well as Internet, telephones, radios, and video-conferencing equipment.
• This extreme hostile environment is analogous to human space flight and has been used in the training of Space Station astronauts and as a platform for research and technology development since 2001.

Partners

NURC (National Undersea Research Center)
UNCW (The University of North Carolina at Wilmington)
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
NURP (National Undersea Research Program)