undersea crew

Nasa will send an international crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in July, in preparation for future deep space missions.

The Nasa Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 20 expedition crew will stay 62ft below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the 14-day mission.

The crew and two professional habitat technicians will travel to Florida International University’s Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat, which is 6.2 miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.

The NEEMO 20 mission aims to evaluate tools and techniques that could be used for future spacewalks on various surfaces and gravity levels, including asteroids, moons of Mars and the Martian surface.

NEEMO project lead Bill Todd said: "The NEEMO team is particularly excited about this mission as it is a huge milestone to have achieved 20 missions at Aquarius over the past 15 years.

"It has…clearly proven to be as close to spaceflight as is possible here on Earth."

"Living and working in the highly operational, isolated and extreme environment of the aquatic realm has provided significant science and engineering for the benefit of human spaceflight. It has also clearly proven to be as close to spaceflight as is possible here on Earth."

Considering the distance of potential mission destinations, the team will also assess time delays in communications, the ESA-sponsored hardware, which is designed to allow crew members to interpret the procedures using a tablet, a smartphone and a head-mounted interface.

NEEMO 20 will be directed by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, and assisted by Nasa astronaut Serena Aunon, Nasa EVA management office engineer David Coan, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Norishige Kanai.

Image: NEEMO 16 aquanauts Kimiya Yui and Tim Peake, and astronaut Mike Gernhardt in the DeepWorker single-person submarine. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.