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.
