Today marked the first day of the first run of a new analog mission at NASA:  Autonomous Mission Operations. The Autonomous Mission Operations – or AMO – tests look at the capability of a crewed spacecraft to plan and fly a mission with minimum support from ground.  As human exploration moves farther and farther away from Earth, the constant communication we currently enjoy with the crew of the International Space Station will become impossible. Communication from Earth to the crew will take longer and longer to reach its destination – and the same will be true of the answers the crew sends back.

The communications delays that astronauts would experience on the way to a Lagrange Point, asteroid, Mars or other distant destinations will make it necessary to change the capabilities of spacecraft, change the roles and responsibilities of ground and crew and the ways that ground and crew interact during the mission.  The purpose of the AMO project is to define what some of those changes might be.

To do so, AMO will run two series of tests this summer. The first is taking place May 15-21, and the second June 12-17. During those time frames, four different crews made up of one astronaut commander and several space shuttle or International Space Station flight controllers acting as flight engineers will run three, two-hour mission scenarios a day. Working inside the Habitat Demonstration Unit (which has been dubbed Cabot for the AMO tests) at Johnson Space Center, the crews will take turns working through the same timelines under three different simulated time delays: 1.2 seconds (what we’d experience at the second Lagrange Point), 50 seconds (the communication delay for an asteroid), and five minutes (how long it takes to say hello to Mars).

As part of the simulation, the commanders of the four crews will send blog updates throughout the course of the mission. Today’s blogger and commander (of crew A) is astronaut Rex Walheim.

15 May, Rex Walheim, Entry 1:
Crew is in good health and good spirits.  Today we are working IRED Cleaning, water transfer, filter changeout and camera surveys.  We are working a little slowly as we get acclimated to the habitat.  MCC is treating us well.  Food is good. 

15 May, Rex Walheim, Entry 2:
I was tasked with finding the ovoid.  There was a slight mutiny onboard as the other crewmembers found out what this task was and decided they wanted to be involved in this Easter egg hunt as described in the Limerick below:

There once was a crew on the Cabot
That searched for the egg of a rabbit
Inside was a sweet
Just one tiny treat 
So whoever first found it would grab it

(Mission Manager’s Note:  Stowage and Inventory on the space station is something that the crew and ground consistently monitor and manage.  In spaceflight, staying organized and keeping the proper items in stock is critical. Occasionally, we find that items have gone missing or have been tucked in a location that wasn't accurately recorded.  To simulate this for AMO, we have a "MISSING-ITEM-SEARCH" scheduled. The crew is looking for a piece of Environmental and Life Support “equipment” that had been noted as MIA.  In reality, the missing “equipment” was a plastic egg filled with candy that we hid somewhere inside the Deep Space Habitat. We called it an ovoid canister.  The crew reports when/if they find the missing item and the stowage location to the Mission Control Center.  It's a fun task, but mimics a real-life scenario.)

15 May, Rex Walheim, Entry 3:
Crew feeling well.  Procedures going well.  Almost feels like we have been here before.  50 second time delay in both directions.   It is about on the borderline where you can either press on autonomously, or wait for the ground to tell you what to do during an off nominal situation.

Ovoid found and consumed!

Follow along with the AMO tests via Facebook at www.facebook.com/nasa.amo.

Dr. Love's Underwater Blog 2011 #1
October 25
Key Largo, FL

Image at right: The NEEMO 15 Crew performs a simulated behavioral health assessment scenario.

This is Mission Day 5. Time flies fast. We have performed six “spacewalks” so far, and today we had no scheduled Extravehicular Activity (EVA), but that didn’t mean we had free time…

The first event began when one of our habitat technicians rushed into the cabin with a red swollen arm. He told us that he had been stung by a jellyfish. After a while, he fainted. It took me some time to realize that this was a simulation scenario which was a part of the behavioral health and performance study. Fortunately we have a crewmember, David Saint-Jacques, who has medical background, so he took the lead to give the patient some treatment with medical kits. The NEEMO15 commander, Shannon Walker, kept contact with the Mission Control Center by phone, getting some advice from a dive medical officer on the ground. Steven Squyres recorded each step we performed. And I assisted David, following his instruction. We worked fine as a team.

We went through the second scenario in the afternoon. This time, the smoke alarm suddenly rang out in the habitat. We were told that the smoke came from the microwave, so we pulled out its power cable. According to the emergency procedure we tried to use oxygen masks in the cabin, but somehow they didn’t work. We were forced to evacuate the cabin and fled to the wet porch. Oxygen masks worked there. It seemed that there was a problem somewhere between the wet porch and the cabin. We looked at a schematic of the air supply/vent system of the habitat. We successfully found the cause, and in the end, the case was closed.

Since we might have to deal with some troubles by ourselves during long-distance exploration, coordinating with the ground staff along the way a great exercise. And we demonstrated good teamwork in both cases.

Today was Day 4 of our mission and it was a challenging one. As usual, the action was centered around the “EVAs”, or extra-vehicular activities in NASA parlance – our simulated space walks.

We had two different kinds of activities in today’s EVAs. One of them was very slow, very methodical, and very effective. Imagine a long telescoping pole – we called it a boom – with big heavy magnets on each end. We used this boom to get around on the simulated asteroid surface (i.e., the sea floor), moving like an inchworm.

It goes like this: Fasten both magnets to anchor points on the surface. Unfasten one and move to it to a new anchor point. Fasten it. Unfasten the other one and move it to a new anchor point… and repeat as necessary. It was slow, but it got us to where we wanted to go pretty reliably.

Once we arrived at our destination, the boom was great. It’s hard to do things like hit a rock with a hammer in zero-g without going flying. But with the boom solidly in place, we could wrap our legs around it and whack away at the rock pretty easily. So a boom could be a good technique for geologists to use to get work done on an asteroid, I think.

The other part of the EVA was totally different… jet packs! We had battery-powered thruster packs on our backs that we could use to move very quickly and easily from one place to another. And yeah, I have to confess, it was every bit as much fun as it sounds like it was. Quick, easy, and very cool. Problem was, once we arrived at our destination with a job to do, staying in place was a lot harder.

Sometimes the best answer to a complicated problem is to use some combination of techniques. So one way I could see this going might be that astronauts would use jet packs to move long distances over an asteroid surface, and then a boom for smaller motions and getting work done.

Or maybe they’ll use something completely different! It’s only Day 4 of the mission, and we’ve got a lot more techniques to try… so we’ll see.

Image on the right: Aquanauts David Saint-Jacques and Takuya Onishi working together during a simulated Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA)

Already day 3 in our new home! I’m impressed how quickly the team adapted to this alien environment, with the beautiful coral reef and marine life outside the window, the omnipresent and complex life support systems of Aquarius, the odd feeling of distance from people living on the surface… all of these make it feel like we’re in another world!

 I think that shared experience has made us quickly comfortable living here with each other. We really function like a team, meaning we don’t think about our life and work together as “teamwork”, but rather as spontaneous, easygoing and friendly interaction. When people are genuinely happy to work together, teamwork just happens, it’s the natural way people like to help others and work towards a common goal.

 Everything here is teamwork. During our mock spacewalks it’s most obvious: the outside crew, inside crew, habitat technicians, safety divers, mission controllers and CapComs, scientists, engineers, public affairs personnel, all fluidly working together. But teamwork is also omnipresent in daily life in Aquarius, in the meal preparation, in the care for common areas, in the way we generally look out for each other.

Our families are also part of the team! Today instead of the usual dehydrated hiking food, we ate a meal prepared by my wife and sent down to Aquarius with the daily supplies delivery. A nice morale boost!

Teamwork is essential if we want to achieve something bigger than ourselves – and it’s fun, too!