Astronaut asteroid training goes to great depths
SEP 27, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025603
MSNBC : NASA has announced its next voyage of discovery, not into space but 18 meters beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. That neutral-buoyancy environment approximates the near-weightless conditions astronauts would encounter on an asteroid. Shannon Walker, a NASA astronaut who lived and worked on the International Space Station for five months in 2010, will lead the crew.The main objective of the 13-day mission, set to start 17 October, is to test the techniques needed to explore near-Earth asteroids, such as anchoring to an asteroid’s surface, moving around on a surface without gravity, and deploying data-collecting instruments. This will be the 15th trip of NASA’s extreme environment operations group; previous missions have rehearsed moonwalking, assembling space station modules, and making visits to Mars.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
