After retiring its one of the most-talked about space shuttle, NASA, yet again, hit the headlines on Monday owing to its new experiment with an international crew of astronauts who were being sent to ocean floor to spend 12 days. The latest experiment is part of a new expedition to a near-Earth asteroid, reports NASA.
The expedition, which is the 16th excursion of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), involved a group of four aquanauts from the international team of 'aquanauts' from NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The mission took place in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat off the coast of Key Largo, Fla., at 11:04 a.m. EDT Monday.
NEEMO is the US space agency that has been using the 20m-deep Aquarius habitat as its test-bed facility and running its studies since 2001.
"WE HAVE SPLASHDOWN! #NEEMO16 crew entered the wet porch of their new home, the Aquarius Habitat at 12pm ET," said NASA's NEEMO Twitter account.
"It's an excellent analogue for what we do in space," according to Major Tim, a former British Army Air Corps helicopter pilot.
He further added, "we will have deep-worker submersibles with us and they will be our space exploration vehicles, with robotic arms and foot plates on them, so we can attach ourselves and explore the asteroid, taking samples - soil samples, rock samples, etc.," reported BBC News.
NASA's Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket will initiate the first human mission to an asteroid in 2025.
