Table of Contents

Neemo 9

Neemo Topside Report

• Winding Up
• Saturday, April 15 and Sunday, April 16
• Friday, April 14 and Saturday, April 15
• Tuesday, April 11
• Sunday, April 9 and Monday, April 10
• Friday, April 7 and Saturday, April 8
• Thursday, April 6
• Wednesday, April 5
• Tuesday, April 4

Winding Up

NEEMO Topside Report

NEEMO 9 is almost in the history books. We have had a very successful and rewarding mission, and have demonstrated that tele-mentored and tele-robotic surgery can be accomplished even in some of the most extreme environments on earth. At the same time, we've been able to exercise many different concepts and techniques that may be useful in taking NASA on to bolder adventures at the Moon and Mars. The last few days have been spent finishing up Waterlab and doing some search and retrieval exercises.

Just as on the International Space Station, future inhabitants of the Moon or Mars will need periodic cargo vehicles to resupply them with the essentials they need to live in such a harsh environment (air, water, food, etc.) The cargo vehicle will be targetted to land close (but not too close!) to their base. So a task astronauts may one day face will be to find their cargo vehicle with fresh supplies.

It's also likely that the cargo vehicle will have a homing beacon. If it's working, the crew can follow the signal right to it. If it's not, they'll be given a likely "footprint" area that it landed in, and have to systematically search that area. In the last 2 days we've exercised these concepts.

First, the Topside Team placed two transponders out on the reef. The ExPOC team at Mission Control was able to see on a map where these were relative to the habitat. The crew couldn't navigate directly to them, but instead had to take their cues (using their underwater communications system) from the ExPOC to be vectored to the transponders. It was an interesting exercise with future lessons learned, and both were successfully recovered.

In the second exercise, the Topside Team hid a payload cannister on the reef. In this case the premise was that the locater beacon didn't work, so a systematic search was conducted. To ensure that the crew always maintained positive contact with a way home, they used lines which were tied off at various points, while a "sweep" search was conducted. Again we documented lessons learned for the future, and the search was successful. As this was a cargo vehicle, there was a surprise snack inside, which hopefully was still dry so the crew could enjoy it!

 

We had a special guest drop by today - the first American aquastronaut, Mercury Astronaut and Sealab II aquanaut Scott Carpenter. He and the NEEMO 9 crew spoke briefly right before decompression began today. It was a nice gesture by one of the primary inspirations behind the NEEMO Project.

However, the clock is running out, and today the crew will began the 16+ hour process called "decompression" in order to allow them to safely "splashup" tomorrow. This is what we call "deco" day. As you now know, they have spent the last 17 days at a depth of 47 feet. At that depth, their bodies have taken on excess amounts of nitrogen which has been absorbed in their body tissues and must be removed.

Decompression is a very safe procedure which is accomplished in several steps: 1) The crew breathes pure oxygen for 3 short intervals to help decrease or "washout" the nitrogen in their blood; 2) the main living quarters are "locked out" from the "wet porch" area and the internal habitat pressure is slowly brought to the surface pressure by exhausting the internal air to the surface (14 hours); and finally 3) the habitat is "blown down" to the 47 foot level again in just a few minutes. Then the hatch is opened and the crew swims slowly to the surface under the watchful eye of escorting safety divers. They should be on the surface at ~ 8:30 am on Thursday, where we will be waiting on the boat to take them home under the expert supervision of NURC Associate Director Otto Rutten.

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Today the NEEMO 9 mission ended successfully with "splashup" at 8:46 am. It was a beautiful, peaceful day on the reef, and all of the aquanauts are doing well and are happy to be back in the fresh air and sunshine. They will be engaged in post mission interviews, physicals, and other activities the rest of the day, and tonight we will celebrate the outstanding success of this mission at the traditional "splashup party".

Saturday, April 15 and Sunday, April 16

Mission Days 13 & 14

NEEMO Topside Report

As the second week of the NEEMO 9 mission comes to an end, the pace is starting to settle down a bit. The science objectives are largely accomplished, and the crew was able to enjoy a well-earned day off on Sunday with scheduled private conferences with their families. Several major "exploration" initiatives were begun toward the end of the week, and will be continuing for the remaining four days of the mission.

A centerpiece of previous NEEMO missions is called "Waterlab". At first glance this may appear to be just a rickety lattice of PVC pipes, strung haphazardly together on the sea floor. But to those of us who have previously constructed Waterlab, it's so much more! Waterlab promotes crew skills of planning out a complex task, handing over from team to team involved in the multiple construction activities required to finish it, following a procedure, and working in a cumbersome environment. It also has relevance as a Lunar analog task.

During the Apollo program there was no requirement for EVA (spacewalking) crewmembers to communicate with their landing vehicle/habitat. Crewmembers during Apollo communicated directly to Earth. Due to the planned increase in lunar surface crew size, in the future it may be beneficial for crewmembers to have the capability to communicate to crewmembers remaining in their habitat while conducting surface exploration. But the lunar horizon for an EVA crewmember is ~2.4 km, so in order to communicate to the habitat while on excursions beyond that distance, a communications relay station will need to be constructed - kind of like a mini cell phone tower. A 20' (6.15m) tall relay tower would increase the communication range to ~9 km. So constructing Waterlab is similar to relay tower constructions we may someday see on the Moon. It is being done with a c.g. config determined from the earlier c.g. experiment.

One important question facing NASA as we prepare to return to the Moon is how to make our EVA time more efficient. During this mission we are collecting data concerning the crew members' work efficiency, measured by comparing the overhead time it takes to prepare for an EVA compared to the productive EVA time. This measurement is called the Work Efficiency Index (WEI). Exploration EVAs (on the Moon or Mars) will be conducted at a much higher frequency than we are currently performing EVA out of the Space Shuttle or International Space Station. Therefore, the WEI of exploration EVAs will need to improve by a factor of 10 over current methods! The data collected from this and future NEEMO missions will provide insight regarding how the WEI can be improved both in terms of equipment design and crew procedures.

Another important question we face prior to returning to the Moon is how to maximize the human and robotic resources we have. We have successfully demonstrated that human operators on Earth can control robots on a distant world with numerous Mars missions. We routinely use robotics on the Space Shuttle and Space Station that are controlled by in situ astronauts. And we have the experience of hundreds of suited spacewalks. What we don't have much experience with is optimizing between the 3 options. Crew time is precious, so it's advantageous to move operations to ground controllers wherever possible. The ground has the time delay to deal with, but they have advantages like being able to work all night long while the crew is sleeping. In short, there is always a tradeoff between the more precious crew time and the (expected) higher efficiency of crew work. How to optimize the split of work between EVA work, crew controlled robotics, and ground controlled robotics is an important question that needs to be answered prior to returning to the Moon.

The ROV on this NEEMO mission performs the role of the robot. It can be a surface rover, or a free flyer (resembling the end of a robotic arm.) It can be controlled by the control center in Houston, or the in situ crew.

As the mission continues, we have been experimenting with all options and documenting lessons learned to help answer the larger question of how best to split work.

NEEMO 9 is just the tip of the iceberg in answering this question, but over the course of multiple missions we expect to have a significant database to help drive our Lunar ops concepts.

The left pictures show the ROV, in this case driven by the ExPOC in Houston, bringing some Waterlab parts to an aquanaut to aid in his work.

We have several activities planned during this mission to formally measure the efficiency of EVA crewmembers compared to ground based robotics, so that working together we can optimize the science productivity of an EVA astronaut. For this study we are measuring the task efficiency index (TEI) of humans working alone compared to robots working alone compared to a human/robotic synergy solution. This TEI study is the start of a series of studies that will be conducted in various analog environments to optimize the interactions between humans and robots, using various objective measures of scientific return vs. crew time.

If you missed the Good Morning America feature on ABC yesterday, you can see it on the link below: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1847775.

We apologize for all the false alarms on the airing of this event. Hopefully it didn't inconvenience anyone too much. The lesson learned is that the network airs its features when it decides to, not necessarily when they tell you they will...

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Friday, April 14 and Saturday, April 15

Mission Days 12 & 13

NEEMO Topside Report

Today we accomplished the last of the CMAS (Center for Minimal Access Surgery) research objectives that were waiting to be run. The first involved looking at emergency treatment of joint injuries using ultrasound and telementored arthroscopy. The second was an investigation on haptics.

A joint injury, such as a torn meniscus or dislocation, is an example of a potential injury that would require emergency treatment by other members of the mission crew. Joint injuries are frequently diagnosed by ultrasound investigation, and depending on the injury, may then be treated by arthroscopy. This minimally invasive technique involves creating a number of small incisions through which the surgeon inserts a camera and the surgical instruments necessary to repair the injury. In this experiment, the aquanauts used a portable ultrasound device to perform a diagnostic ultrasound examination on a crewmember's knee. They used a specially designed training manual and received guidance from an expert orthopedic surgeon in Hamilton, Ontario via telementoring. With step-by-step telementoring from Dr. Anthony Adili, they will then attempt to repair a simulated joint injury (torn meniscus) using a medical training model of a knee.

Since telementoring relies on transmission of video images over a telecommunications network, time delay (latency) becomes an issue when images are sent over very long distances. In order to study the effect of latencies similar to those that would be experienced during telementoring from earth to the moon, the astronauts will also attempt the arthroscopic joint repair with telementoring using a telecommunications network that mimics Lunar latency (2 second time delay).

This technology may one day enable expert surgeons to guide non-physicians through the procedures necessary to provide emergency surgical care to astronauts injured during space exploration missions, and to patients in remote locations without any access to a physician.

You've seen examples so far this mission of a surgeon, located in a remote location (Hamilton, Ontario) performing surgical techniques using a robotic device. You may be asking, "how does the surgeon feel what the robot is doing?" After all, the feedback from the tools to the hands is a big cue to a surgeon doing his work. Doesn't he lose all sense of feel when working with a robot?

To give the operator the ability to feel, these robotic devices employee a technology called "haptics." Haptics is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with robotic devices. By using special input/output devices the user can receive feedback from robotic devices in the form of felt sensations in the hand. So for instance, if the robotic manipulator hit something, the control in the operator's hand would push back, so that he can feel the contact from the manipulator, thousands of kilometers away.,

However, there is a downside to this type of technology: a large enough time delay affects haptics to the point where the user cannot control the device. There are time delays built in any time large distances are involved. The larger the distance, the larger the delay.

During NEEMO 9, we evaluated a new technology called TiDeC. TiDeC is a time delay compensator that allows a haptic enabled device to be controlled from a distance of nearly 1300 miles. Dr Anvari was again in Hamilton, and using TiDeC assisted haptics, will be able to guide the crew through a series of tasks and each side feels every move each other makes.

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Tuesday, April 11

Mission Day 9

NEEMO Topside Report

Today brought another round of interesting activities aboard Aquarius, as we went through the exercise of robotically manipulating simulated Lunar samples. One of the primary goals of astronauts returning to the Moon will be to collect noteworthy geological samples for eventual return to Earth. Once they're collected and brought back to the lunar base, then what?

We are fortunate to have the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division at JSC (better known as ARES) involved on the NEEMO 9 mission. The Lunar analog sample activity today was designed to demonstrate current capabilities for remote geologic sample collecting and manipulation as well as science planning, communications, and data gathering in an extreme environment. This activity is helping to prepare for future sample collection missions in the extreme conditions of the Lunar environment.

We know that we need to take great care to avoid contamination issues with Lunar samples. Obviously we don't want to risk contaminating our crewmembers with anything that might be present on the samples, but it's also important that we don't contaminate the samples with traces of Earth or Earth-bound life. We need to be sure that anything we find in the Lunar samples indeed has a Lunar origin. So it is likely that we will have some kind of sterile environment that the samples go into, and inside which they can be manipulated (scanned, photographed, measured, etc.) It is also likely that a remotely controlled (from Earth) robot will have a prominent role in this task, as it will free up more valuable crew time for other things - or just allow the crew time for a needed break!

Today simulated Lunar samples (Earth rocks that geologically resemble those we know exist on the Moon) were manipulated remotely using the telerobot operated from the Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) in Ontario, Canada per instructions from the science investigators back at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The robotic manipulator was able to handle every task it was assigned from picking the rocks up and displaying them to the scientists for decision making to putting the samples in containers and closing the containers for storage. Again, Dr. Mehran Anvarri operated the robot from Hamilton, Ontario. Even with the 2 second Lunar time delay introduced, he showed once again the power of telerobotics - not only for surgery, but as an multifunction tool for Exploration!

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Sunday, April 9 and Monday, April 10

Mission Days 7 & 8

NEEMO Topside Report

We had some amazing accomplishments on Sunday while (hopefully) most of you were enjoying your weekends. We started a new Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) experiment to evaluate telerobotic technologies in extreme and lunar environments. The robot in question is an experimental new 2-armed robot is much more compact and portable than previous systems. It has "stereo" cameras, which allows the remote surgeon to see in 3-D, rather than the standard 2-D image on a flat screen. It gets digitally linked to the robotic arms aboard Aquarius via a combination of land-based and wireless telecommunications networks. The task was to perform vascular suturing (stitching up a vein) on a medical model aboard Aquarius, with one of the aquanauts assisting the surgeon by changing instruments on the robotic arms and passing sutures.

This marks the first time in human history an entire robotic surgical platform was transported to an extreme environment (in this case Aquarius) and was manipulated successfully from afar. From the control console at CMAS in Hamilton, Ontario, Dr. Mehran Anvarri was able to perform a complex surgical task (vascular suturing, or stitching up a vein). Imagine turning your crowded bedroom into an operating room, assembling and hanging an incredibly sophisticated robot between two bunks, and enabling a surgeon thousands of kilometers away perform a surgical procedure with it! That's what occurred onboard Aquarius Sunday. But there's more: previous research has shown that surgeons can adapt to latencies of 200 - 500ms, but "common knowledge" said that time delays greater than 500 ms (half a second) would make such a task impossible. On Sunday it was done successfully even with a 2 second time delay - equivalent to the time it would take for the signal to travel to the Moon! This truly was a noteworthy scientific achievement.

The other major new CMAS experiment that was performed was a validation of digital radiology. One of the possible medical emergencies that might arise in an extreme environment, such as a space exploration mission, is an orthopedic injury. A bone fracture would require diagnosis and medical treatment as soon as possible.

Since X-rays are very important tools in both diagnosing orthopedic injuries and in determining appropriate treatment, we wish to demonstrate that digital x-ray images can be transmitted from an extreme environment over a telecommunications network for evaluation by an expert radiologist. Transmission of medical images such as x-rays over a telecommunications network results in both a time delay (latency) and in some loss of image quality.

The ability to transmit digital x-ray images from an extreme environment requires the compression of the x-ray data to enable fast delivery of the images. However, higher compression rates cause image degradation which could hinder the ability to make a clinical diagnosis. Our goal is to send a series of compressed x-ray images to evaluate which compression algorithms provide both the image quality to make a clinical diagnosis and a timely data transfer. Once the images are uploaded, a physicist and a radiologist will evaluate each image without knowing whether it was sent from Aquarius over the simulated lunar network or an uncompressed x-ray image sent from within the hospital.

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Friday, April 7 and Saturday, April 8

Mission Days 5 & 6

NEEMO Topside Report

The pace onboard Aquarius stayed relentless through Saturday. In addition to a very full schedule, we have been experiencing numerous smaller difficulties, each of which requires time consuming troubleshooting, consultation with specialists, and work arounds. Many of the problems can be traced back to the laptops we use onboard. While these are modern, capable laptops, they have been very trouble plagued throughout this mission. They each display their own quirks, and consequently we've given them each their own names! (Names from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", of course.)

You might think that as long it was safe and dry, a computer would be just as happy in space or under the sea as at your desk - but you would be wrong! In space the constant bombardment by high energy (radiation) particles hitting the circuit boards sometimes "upsets" the computation, causing the computer to fail or need to be restarted. In Aquarius we have our own unique challenges. For starters, the increased atmoshpheric pressure squeezes the housings that hold the hard drives, and sometimes they can't spin up quickly enough for the computer to boot. (We've gone through many computers that DIDN'T work trying to find a few that did.) Furthermore, the high humidity environment is no friend to computers. Finally, we are just asking them to do a lot. There's a lot of software loaded on them for all of our equipment and experiments, and sometimes despite our best intentions, we find that one software package conflicts with others. To make a long story short, for several days now the crew, NURC staff, ExPOC, Topside team and various specialists have been burning the midnight oil trying to overcome these problems and salvage all mission objectives. It's been inspirational to watch, and a testimony to the capabilities and professionalism of everyone involved.

On Saturday we accomplished an objective we called a "vehicle inspection." On the International Space Station and Space Shuttle we sometimes need to look at something externally to understand a problem we have or damage that has occurred. This is how the protective tiles on the Space Shuttle get inspected after launch now. The primary method for doing this is to use one of the Canadian-built robotic arms and maneuver it into position so that its video cameras can show the specialists on the ground what is going on. This is a primary method (as opposed to a spacewalk) for two reasons: risk to the crew, and "work efficiency" of a spacewalk (or "EVA" as we call them.) More on work efficiency in a later report...

We envision that periodic inspections of a lunar habitat will be required just as they are on our current space vehicles, and that a robotic system will have a prominent role once again (because spacewalks carry some additional risk by their very nature.) For instance, we may notice that there's a small leak because the pressure keeps slowly falling inside the habitat. A big enough leak into the vacuum of space might be visible from the outside - kind of like seeing your breath on a cold winter's day. In our scenario, to play the role of a robotic arm we used our trusty little ROV again. The crew flew it all around the exterior of Aquarius, taking care not to hit Aquarius, but also getting close enough to see little details in the video camera. As for the vehicle inspection, the crew was able to successfully and confidently fly it all around their habitat, and get high resolution imagery while doing so.

NASA is in the early phases of designing the space suit for Lunar and Mars exploration. The Apollo moon walks demonstrated that the weight and center of gravity (c.g). of the space suit and portable life support system backpack were important parameters affecting astronaut performance. To investigate the acceptable c.g. limits for future designs, the NASA EVA Physiology, Systems and Performance Project (EPSP) working in conjunction with the Crew and Thermal Systems engineers have developed reconfigurable c.g back pack that can be worn by divers on "sea walks". On Saturday the NEEMO divers weighed out at lunar gravity levels (1/6 g), donned the reconfigurable backpacks and performed a series of tasks representative of planetary exploration. These tasks, performed under six different center of gravity configurations included: timed walks, jogs and runs, kneeling, falling and recovering, picking up rocks, shoveling and climbing ladders. The divers evaluated each of the tasks using a modified Cooper-Harper rating scale. The timed ambulation tasks will be compared to a control group performing the same ambulations using a partial gravity weight relief system at the Johnston Space Center. This comparison will allow the data to be adjusted for the effects of water drag.

The advantages of performing these tasks on saturation excursion dives include a real operational environment, unlimited time duration and the ability to investigate the full six degree of freedom work volume. For safety reasons the ground based partial gravity simulators do not allow subjects to fall down. Later this week the divers will perform the same tasks under simulated Martian Gravity conditions. They will also wear the reconfigurable c.g backpacks while performing a structure assembly task. The divers will perform half of the task with the c.g currently planned for the Lunar/Mars suit and the other half with the c.g configuration that had the best Cooper-Harper ratings. This data will be combined with c.g studies in other environments (partial gravity simulator and parabolic flight) to drive out the optimum configuration of the exploration suit portable life support system (backpack).

Thanks for staying with us!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Thursday, April 6

Mission day 4

Today was another busy day for our sea dwelling NEEMO 9 crew. The major new accomplishments of note were performing another major science objective for the Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS), mapping and surveying the alien landscape in the immediate area around Aquarius, and hosting a film crew from ABC for a feature that will air this weekend on Good Morning America.

Telementoring allows an experienced surgeon in a distant location to provide real-time advice and guidance to another surgeon during a live surgical procedure. Teleconferencing technology provides a two-way audio and video connection, allowing the two surgeons to talk with each other, and providing the expert surgeon (mentor) with views of the distant operating room and the surgical field. This technology allows surgeons to safely learn new surgical techniques in their own hospitals with the aid of a more experienced surgeon who may be located at a hospital far away.

During the NEEMO 7 mission in October 2004, we demonstrated for the first time that with telementoring from an expert located at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, Ontario, Aquarius astronauts with no medical training could be guided through the steps of surgical procedures using simulated patients.

The purpose of the experiment today - "Emergency Treatment of Fractures using External Fixation and Telementoring" - was to build on our experience during NEEMO 7 by evaluating the use of telementoring for emergency treatment of other medical conditions that could arise during a space mission. A broken bone is an example of a potential injury that would require emergency treatment by other members of the mission crew. One of the methods of stabilizing limb fractures is external fixation, in which pins inserted through the skin into the bone are attached to a steel rod outside the limb. In this experiment, the astronauts will attempt to use external fixation to stabilize a leg fracture in a simulated patient. They will be guided through the steps of the procedure by an expert orthopedic surgeon in Hamilton, Ontario via telementoring.

Since telementoring relies on transmission of video over a network, time delay becomes an issue when video is sent over very long distances. In order to study the effect of delays similar to those that would be experienced during telementoring from Earth to the Moon, the astronauts will also attempt the external fixation procedure with telementoring using a telecommunications network that mimics lunar latency (2 second time delay).

This technology may one day enable expert surgeons to guide non-physicians through the procedures necessary to provide emergency surgical care to astronauts injured during space exploration missions, and to patients in remote locations without any access to a physician.

We envision that one of the first tasks for a crew returning to the Moon to live will be to survey and map the immediate area around their new home. While satellite maps of the landing site will certainly be available, the detailed maps they develop in situ can then be used by scientists and Mission Control Center personnel to plan the Extra Vehicular Activities for the crew as they work. Similarly, we started this mission with general bathymetric maps of the ocean floor near Aquarius. Today our crew used a navigational device (called a "Cobra Tac") to record the coordinates of landmarks of interest within a 150 foot radius of Aquarius. This, along with detailed bathymetrical data we've previouly obtained of the ocean floor will allow us to generate a much more detailed map. The detailed map is required to plan our ROV (rover robot) activities later in the mission, among other things.

Today was a day filled with outreach events, both "educational" (to school children) and "public affairs" (to media.) The big media event of the day involved a film crew from ABC who did a live interview for a feature event. It will air on Good Morning America on your local ABC station on Saturday morning, April 8 (0700 CDT/0800 EDT - check your local listings). There is a possibility they will do a follow up on Sunday morning, same time. The crew really enjoyed the Educational Outreach events today as well, and through Mission Day 4 they have spoken to school children in Alaska, California, New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Florida. The positive responses and thanks from participants have been flooding in to the Topside Team!

As you might imagine, in a tropical ocean teeming with life, any dark, warm, wet place is likely to be a welcome home to bacteria. The wetsuits the aquanauts wear are just such a place. Every day after use they carefully are treated in an enzymatic solution to control bacterial growth. We are fortunate on this mission to have an experiment sponsored by Mt. Carmel High School in Houston designed to look at the effectiveness of our treatment technique. Throughout the mission Ron Garan will be taking swabs of several different areas in his wetsuit and the weporch, and we are sending those samples back to Houston for the students to analyze using scientific methods. This is a unique partnership with a high school, and will benefit them by giving their students a real world problem to investigate, while potentially yielding valuable data for future Aquarius operations.

On a personal note, out Topside Team sadly bid adieu to two members who greatly facilitated the success of this mission over the last two weeks. Kristen Painting and Dan Sedej had to return to Houston to their full time jobs. We miss you guys, and appreciate all the hard work over the last few weeks. We couldn't have done it without you!

Thanks for following along!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team (Marc, Bill, Monika, Dan, Trevor, Alex, Kimi)

Wednesday, April 5

Mission day 3

Today was an extremely busy day aboard America's Inner Space Station. We had a few glitches along the way, but it was a very successful day overall, including a crew piloting exercise of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), orientation dives for Tim and Nicole in the "Superlite 17" dive gear, remote control of the ROV from our team in the Mission Control Center in Houston, evaluation of tele-surgery using small robots that go inside the patient, and a linkup with our friends on the International Space Station.

We have a small team supporting this mission from Houston called the "Advanced Operations Cadre", and they work in a versatile little control center called the Exploration Planning Operations Center, or ExPOC. They have been participating in NEEMO missions since the beginning, help develop procedures and ops concepts, and staff the ExPOC during the mission.

The ROV has 2 cameras and the ability to "fly" underwater. It can send the camera views back to the crew and/or the Houston team, and can be controlled remotely by a pilot in Houston. It can pick things up and move them with the use of a manipulator, and can roll across the ocean bottom on wheels like a rover on a distant planet. For NEEMO, it acts as an analog to a robotic arm (like we have on the Space Shuttle and Space Station), or like a surface rover. We have many interesting exercises planned for it during this mission to show as an analog for both modes.

The Superlite 17 is a hard hat diving system, and is one of the most popular commercial diving systems in the world. For "surface" exploration tasks, it allows our aquanauts to be weighted to give a buoyancy effect like the gravity on the moon and Mars, and gives them a limited visibility helmet much like they might find in a space suit. For simplicity and safety reasons, it uses an umbilical instead of a closed-loop life support system. Note the helmet camera, which sends pictures back to the Mission Control team:

The new science today involved miniature surgical robots developed at the University of Nebraska. These "in vivo" robots are designed to assist laparoscopic surgeons by functioning from completely within the abdominal environment. They have the capability of vision feedback and task assistance from on-board cameras and manipulators. The robots include versions that are both mobile and fixed base, and have been tested in animal surgeries with much success.

One potential use of these robots, in addition to surgical procedures at medical centers, is to use them in remote or extreme environments. Potential uses may include battlefields and long-duration space missions. With this mission we are evaluating the time necessary and ease of use to perform simple laparoscopic procedures utilizing different vision systems in a remote environment. We are also looking at the ability to be telementored to perform a simple procedure (appendectomy) after learning these tasks.

The visual feedback from the robots will be used and compared to visual feedback from a laparoscope. Results will help to validate in vivo camera robotics as an effective alternative to laparoscope use. The telementoring results will demonstrate that non-surgeons - having been trained with a specified skill set - can be telementored to build on that skill set and perform a laparoscopic appendectomy using in vivo robotics.

The Space Station linkup was interesting and the whole crew enjoyed it very much. It's not often that the crews of the world's only Inner and Outer Space Stations get to link up and talk with each other. It surely brought back nostalgic memories to astronaut Jeff Williams, the American astronaut who just recently arrived at the International Space Station as a member of the Expedition 14 crew. He is also an aquastronaut, having been the commander of the NEEMO 3 crew!

To help you better appreciate life onboard, we've included a photo from today of Dave showing typical activities onboard: he's wearing the ambulatory monitoring system (AMS) and an Actiwatch (with the yellow band), while monitoring ROV operations being conducted from the ExPOC. The picture is taken standing inside the "entry lock".

Thanks for following along!
NEEMO 9 Topside Team

Tuesday, April 4

Mission day 2

Today at 10:38 am Ron Garan, Nicole Stott, and Tim Broderick joined an elite group of people in this world who have spent 24 hours under the sea in "saturation", making them the world's 3 newest aquanauts. Ross Hein and Jim Buckley, of course, were already experienced aquanauts, and Dave Williams is now a two-time "aquastronaut"!

Today the crew focused on the first of the Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) experiments, which is an investigation on the Impact of Latency on Human Performance and Brain Activity.

In remote telesurgery, a surgeon controls a multi-armed robot located at the patient's bedside from a distant location using a telecommunications network. This emerging technology has the potential to provide emergency medical and surgical care to astronauts during space flights, soldiers injured in battle, and patients living in remote regions on earth where there are no physicians.

However, one of the major limitations of remote telesurgery is the time delay - or "latency" - that occurs when the video images and signals controlling the robotic arms are transmitted over long distances. Previous research has shown that surgeons can adapt to latencies of 200 - 500ms, but the time delays that occur when signals are sent via satellite can be well over 1 second, and the time it takes signals to travel from the earth to the moon is approximately 2 seconds. Therefore, we will need to find a way to deal with longer latencies if remote telesurgery is going to be used during space travel.

The CMAS 1 experiment will investigate how longer time delays (up to 2 seconds) affect the astronauts' ability to perform certain tasks We will use a device called an electroencephalogram (EEG) to record their brain activity so that we can study which areas of the brain are responsible for adapting to latency. This information will allow us to develop strategies that will enhance the brain's ability to adapt to latency and minimize its negative effects on performance.

During this experiment, the crewmembers will use a laptop computer to perform 4 different tasks that mimic the movements surgeons make during when manipulating a robotic device. They will repeat each task with a varying amount of delay and it will vary from real-time to 2 seconds. While the crewmembers are performing each task, an EEG device will record their brain activity using electrodes held in place by a net worn on their heads. Following the mission, experts in brain activity will study the EEG data in order to determine which areas of the brain are involved in adapting to latency. Hopefully this research will help us to one day deliver telesurgical medical care to the most remote corners of the Earth - and to the Moon!