Hurricane Rina churns over the western Caribbean in this image from NASA's Terra satellite. Forecasters say Rina could veer toward South Florida and toward the Aquarius undersea lab. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations undersea asteroid analog mission off Key Largo,Fla., came to an early end on Wednesday. The six NEEMO crew members surfaced after forecasters predicted Hurricane Rina, a late season tropical storm in the western Caribbean, would grow stronger and veer toward southFlorida.
There were no plans to resume what was to be a 13-day exercise aboard the Aquarius undersea lab. Another NEEMO mission is tentatively planned for the summer of 2012.
The four member international crew, led by NASA astronaut Shannon Walker surfaced during the mid-morning. Walker, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques; Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, Steve Squyres, the Cornell University planetary geologist who serves as principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission; and two support divers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, which operates Aquarius, descended on Oct. 20.
“Despite the length, we accomplished a significant amount of research,” said NEEMO Project Manager Bill Todd.
The 15th NEEMO trip to the Aquarius undersea lab was the first to simulate a mission to an asteroid.Walker’s crew was evaluating mobility strategies on small planetary bodies with minimal gravity.
Their test hardware included jet packs, long poles with magnets at either end to serve as anchoring devices that could be flipped end over end and small submarines that functioned as crewed Space Exploration Vehicles.
Walker’s crew also worked with a 50 second delay in communications, the same kind of obstacle that will confront astronauts exploring millions of miles from Earth.