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Key points:

 

The Aquarius base is mainly used for marine environment research, perfecting naval diving techniques and training astronauts \ divers.
 

Since 2001, it is also home to NASA ’s Extreme Environmental Mission Action (NEEMO) program.
 

The rhythm of underwater training is close, the task is heavy, and the living environment is very unique.

 

The Coral Rehabilitation Foundation, affiliated with the Aquarius Base, is a 13-year-old conservation and education project organization that aims to restore coral reefs along the coast of Florida.

tour base

For such a technical operation, the command center is very low-key, it only occupies the old site of a fishing tackle shop. The only highlight is a backlit wall-sized underwater reef photo and display of antique diving equipment. The first tip in engineering is the u-shaped task console, which has five monitors that act as the eyes and ears of the Aquarius. Garcia spends most of his time at this desk, coordinating a team of 6 to 10 people (depending on the task). They include ship operators and divers responsible for maintaining external systems, and habitats that manage life support and diving operations on board. Technical staff.

Aquarius Operations Manager Roger Garcia and Deputy Research Director Tom Potts [Photo: Susan Karlin]

“We ensure that it will not shut down halfway through the mission,” Garcia said. “Actually, there are more things happening behind the scenes than people think. We have always been busy. Even if everything is done, NASA and mission support personnel have returned home, we must be here to respond to emergencies. Fighting against corrosion and ocean growth. This is an endless battle. We even encountered intruders, even though this is a protected area. We stopped locking the doors because the door locks were always rusty. ”

Garcia brought us back. Along the dock, two staff members were loading a ship with maintenance equipment. Next to it was an emergency decompression cabin and a medium-sized truck-sized iron tank. Decompression sickness is a potentially fatal disease that causes pain due to excessive pressure increase. In this case, nitrogen will expand and bubbles will enter the bloodstream. The decompression chamber will bring the patient back to a higher pressure, and slowly reduce the pressure on the body to release nitrogen more smoothly.

“In the history of this project, we have only used it twice,” Garcia said. “The hospitals in Islamorada and Miami have recompression rooms for treatment, but they do n’t understand our treatment plan. When you do a saturation dive, it ’s a different kind of dive. The treatment time is longer. And more complicated. “

Roger Garcia is standing next to the decompression chamber in Aquarius [Photo: Susan Karlin]

After 24 hours at any depth underwater, the human body will be saturated with nitrogen. With “saturated diving”, divers can stay underwater for a long time. Saturated diving is a technique that determines when divers need to decompress, allowing nitrogen to leave their bodies and then return to the surface. In this case, the habitat became a huge decompression chamber. When the divers complete the mission and are ready to ascend, they will lock themselves in the habitat and breathe oxygen for an hour, while the cabin will slowly reduce the air pressure within 17 hours so that they will not suffer from the reductionTorture. Saturated diving, with a water tank replenishment station along the coral reef, makes the habitat diving time up to 9 hours, while surface diving only takes 1 to 2 hours.

Once decompression is complete, the technician re-pressurizes the habitat to match the external water pressure deep in the habitat. This allows divers to open an airlock that leads to a wet porch. This room has a floor that can be accessed to the water. Keeping the air pressure in the corridor equal to or greater than the water pressure can prevent seawater from flooding the room at this depth. There, divers can wear scuba, enter the water, and then dive to the surface without decompression.

Life in Mission

The mission of NEEMO (Extreme Environmental Mission Action) is to solve the challenges facing future space explorers, from science to psychology. Underwater work closely simulates work under zero gravity conditions, providing limited maneuverability, flexibility, vision and direction. Compared to performing tasks in a swimming pool, living underwater can practice operations with the team. The simulation exercises are a dangerous environment and a close survival route that does not reach the exit quickly. Divers learn to navigate underwater so they do n’t get lost or run out of air. Because their blood is filled with nitrogen, they cannot immediately surface, otherwise there is a danger of death.

“Obviously, this involves risks and requires technical expertise and then separation from the people on the ground who help us coordinate the mission.” Kopra said he spent 7 days in Aquarius on the NEEMO 11 mission in 2006, Traveled to the International Space Station in 2009 and 2015. “This is a good simulation of human space flight.”

The mission has replicated and evaluated the use of scientific instruments and tools on the moon ’s surface, obtained geological core samples, used augmented reality guidelines, and studied body composition, sleep, physiology, and psychology. Kopra staff provided scientific and engineering feedback on the design of new spacesuits that work and walk on the moon. Coleman’s team studied remote-controlled surgery, and doctors remotely guided them to perform operations such as simulated gallbladder and appendectomy on anatomical dummy.

In the foreground of the famous Lago coral reef, weightless divers use the prototype of an extra-vehicle active arm (EVA) Move on the ocean floor to simulate the motion of the asteroid surface. (Photo: NASA)

“Here is a good place to do research, you can choose one or two aspects to carry out future exploration and really dig: such as this new technology, this new construction method, this new communication method What are the possibilities of this new drug therapy? “Coleman said, who lived on the International Space Station from 2010 to 2011. “Normally, I think space can be a technology accelerator. We hope to use it in space, but it can help us develop technology for equally important or even more important earth applications.”

As NASA renewed its interest in returning to the moon, Garcia noticed a shift in the focus of NEEMO ’s mission, shifting from its early focus on asteroid exploration. He said: “We helped them build a small work area as a stone wall.”. “The diver will clamp the seat belt on the wall and work just like on an asteroid. Now the task is more related to drilling, sampling and observation under a microscope.”

Furthermore, in a tight schedule, it is necessary to maintain a challenging workflow, where four scientists and two habitat technicians complete an average of 10 days. “When you do surgery, how do you communicate clearly and clearly?” Kopra said. “How do you cope with the pressure to live together and perform these functions?”

Divers have little rest time. Coleman said: “We have a schedule and you have every minute. If you complete the task in advance, then you should look around to see who needs help. If no one needs help, then you should pick up the camera A photo or a video. If you are still doing nothing, this has never happened, then you should organize the photos and videos you took and send them to the sea. “

Lab personnel Tim Peake (ESA) and Steve Squyres (Cornell University) took their iPads and Some curious ocean observers took photos in the Aquarius habitat. [Photo: NASA]

Although quarrels rarely occur, other cohabitation issues also follow. Garcia said with a smile: “We have met some people, for example, they are not good at cleaning up their garbage.”. “We have toSay, ‘Hey, we are not your maid. You have to wash the dishes yourself. Sometimes we have to deal with damage or equipment failures inside the habitat. The worst case is when the cooling system fails, it is really not comfortable at all. “

Nevertheless, for the rare experience of living and working with marine life, this is only a small price.

“When you are eating dinner, working, and using a computer, and the food chain is outside the window,” Coleman said. “Some fish feel that their habitat is their home, and they are always around the window. I stay up late almost every night, and they will stay nearby until I go to bed and then swim. So this is perfect for sharing the world Combining. They realize that we are part of their world for a reason, and I really like this. “

“We have a large window next to the dining table. We usually eat there. There is a large grouper, about 2 feet in diameter and 9 feet long. It will put its eyeballs next to our big window. Look inside, ”Kopra added. “I remember I went outside and saw the big grouper. I wanted to get close to it, but it was a bit too big for me.”

Restoration of coral reefs

After the trip to Aquarius, our team went to the Coral Rehabilitation Foundation (CRF), a 13-year-old conservation and education project designed to restore coral reefs off the coast of Florida due to storms , Global warming and changes in polluting environmental conditions have been destroyed. We participated in a one-day project to understand how the reduction in the number of corals affects marine ecosystems and helps to cultivate and grow new corals.

Researchers there tested different genotypes to determine which coral is best for reproduction. They grow new corals on “coral trees”, and each coral tree has several horizontal tubes and a vertical tube criss-crossed. The developing juvenile corals (actually animal communities) are hung on the “branches” by ropes. “When corals grow to about half a foot high, divers will transplant them to the surrounding reefs.

The classroom section includes a slide show about science in the morning, followed by a training course on trees and reef models that we work underwater. After lunch, take a 30-minute boat ride with other divers to a staghorn coral nursery, where there are dozens of coral trees, located about 30 feet underwater in the reserve. During the first dive, we spent about 45 minutes clearing the seaweed covering the branches and string so that the seaweed would not overgrow and submerge the coral. The fish immediately surrounded us, grabbing the broken pieces of seaweed. The tricky part of distracting is maintaining buoyancy, so as not to accidentally kick or catch the coral and cause potential damage to it.

Author Susan Karlin cleans a coral tree. [Photo: Torian Richardson]

The boat drove for another half an hour, and we arrived at the place for the second dive and work. A diver scraped a small piece from the existing dead coral to form a rough area. Next, a plastic epoxy is glued to the tip of each small coral’s nail, hardening under water, and then sticking it to the scraped piece and keeping it there until it sticks. This is a slow, deliberate and surprising meditation. In the end, the entire diver successfully planted 95 corals.

Cady Coleman and Josh Simpson grow corals. [Photo: Torian Richardson]

“We have collaborated with the NEEMO mission of the Aquarius base many times,” said Alice Granger, CRF’s communications director. “In order to train astronauts to adapt to the environment in space or other planets, they need some tasks to give them a feeling to understand what it is like to work in spacesuits in different gravity environments.”

Last year, CRF provided NEEMO Mission Divers 23 with coral trees and cobblestone corals for installation during the mission. “This can help them solve problems and improve motor skills,” Granger said. “FIU researchers are monitoring their growth. This is very useful for our work because it allows us to study how cobblestone corals grow at different depths, different light environments and different fish environments.”

Like the Aquarius base, the Coral Recovery Foundation (CRF) is not open to the public during an influenza pandemic. Only a few staff members participated in this event, but plans to reopen after the virus is controlled. “We can’t do this alone. We need to work with as many people as possible,” Granger said. Buzz Aldrin had been there a few years ago, and movies like “Chasing the Coral” really helped inspire and mobilize the public. As a result, we have more people involved. Here, we show that if we work together, we can do something. We can reverse the situation and there is still a chance. “

“Some people think that astronauts are about space, but astronauts are also about earth,” Coleman added. “Understanding the facts behind coral reefs and the disappearance of coral reefs is of great significance to me, but it may be helpful to look at it in a more promising way. I like to know that I have planted something in the sea, which may be different. . “

Translator: Jsmdy