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[Brandi Dean] Hi, welcome to the Space
Vehicle Mockup Facility in building 9

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at the Johnson Space Center
where we are here with Bill Todd

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who is the mission manager
for our NEEMO mission.

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Bill why don't you tell us what NEEMO is.

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I know it's an acronym but it's long.

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[Bill Todd] It is an embedded acronym actually.

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So it's NASA Extreme Environment Mission
Operations named after the famous Captain Nemo.

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[Brandi] And there's a reason
that it's NEEMO right?

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[Bill] Oh yeah, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

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Big fan of Jules Verne and all that admittedly.

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[Brandi] Okay and this mission is under the sea.

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[Bill] Absolutely it is.

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So this is our 16th NEEMO
mission that NASA's been doing.

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So we just started training
this week for the mission.

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And the mission is June of this
year in about six weeks from now.

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[Brandi] Okay.

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So y'all will go, obviously we're not underwater
now, but y'all will go down to Florida

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and the astronauts that are involved with that,

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a crew of four actually will go
down below the sea and do what?

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[Bill] Well we have a crew
of four like you said.

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Four from NASA, three are astronauts
and one other researcher with NASA.

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And we have two people that are members

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of the National Undersea
Research Center, professionals.

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So we have six people on the crew.

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An in our mission in June we're going
to focus on an underwater mission

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that simulates what it's like to travel
to, work and operate on an asteroid.

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[Brandi] Okay.

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I guess that's kind of a new and
interesting question for NASA.

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What all are we looking at?

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[Bill] It really is.

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We've done one more of these missions.

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Early in October we did one.

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Had a little bit of weather
that we had to deal with.

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So that was okay.

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So we're coming back at it again.

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We've iterated a few things.

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And we're going to deal primarily
with the concepts, the tools,

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developing ways to live and
work on these asteroids.

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And it's a little bit tricky.

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NASA's never worked in a place where there's
total absence of gravity on a surface itself.

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So it's challenging.

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[Brandi] Yeah, lots of new
things for us to work on.

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[Bill] Oh yeah, lots of new tools.

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[Brandi] So what are we doing here this week?

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[Bill] So, well we started the
training this week for the crew.

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And what we like to do is we like to
give classroom briefings about everything

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that they need to learn and how to
live in this undersea environment.

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'Cause it's more than just a space mission.

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It's also how to live and work in an
undersea environment which is new for them.

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So it's, and there's lots, a lot of procedures
that you have to follow to be safe there.

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So what we're doing here today in this facility,
in building 9, is we're learning about what it's

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like and what it feels like to work on a device
that can keep you in a zero-gravity state.

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So on this device you have nothing, what
we call ground reaction force, okay,

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so you don't feel your feet on the surface.

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'Cause it's a loss of gravity,
a total absence of gravity.

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So what we're doing here that you can see, and
you can see the crew member there Steve Squyres,

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is that he's learning what it feels like to
have absence of gravity and what the tools feel

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like to work with on the surface of an asteroid.

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[Brandi] And I guess that's one the reasons
that you're going to do this underwater

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as well as the absence of gravity?

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[Bill] Right.

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That's the primary reason that
underwater is so because we can,

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we can weigh the crew out
exactly to zero-gravity.

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So when they leave the habitat, their
living in a habitat, an undersea habitat,

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so they're getting the feel
of the dynamic of what it's

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like to live in this extreme environment.

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They're living there, working there and then
when it's time to do an extravehicular activity,

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an EVA or spacewalk, sometimes it gets
confusing 'cause it's really a sea walk.

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[Brandi] Right.

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[Bill] But when they got out the door and they
go into the ocean they're doing these EVAs

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in this zero-gravity environment
and duplicating the types of tasks

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that we'll have to do on an asteroid.

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[Brandi] Okay.

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And I guess you have to train for that just
like you do for a regular space station mission.

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So that's, that's what this week is about.

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[Bill] Absolutely.

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That's what it's all about to try to
understand the techniques for them.

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But it's also a chance for our engineers
and our scientists to try to figure

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out what tools are appropriate and how
we would do the operational techniques.

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We're not going to answer what
an anchor would look like here.

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That's not the point.

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We're early in the game of
trying to figure this out.

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But we're trying to figure
out what concepts make sense.

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[Brandi] So we're almost kind of
practicing for the practicing here so.

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[Bill] Fair enough.

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[Brandi] Yeah.

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Okay. Alright.

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Well I know that we are going to hopefully talk

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with you a few more times
during the actual mission.

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So we'll get updates on how
that actually turns out.

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It's going to be June 11 through 22.

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And we'll have lots more to come on that.