California, USA: A Wyle expert in human performance in space has been chosen as a crew member for the next undersea research mission in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project.
Dr Andrew Abercromby, who serves as Wyle's deputy head for exploration and mission development and extra vehicular activity (EVA) and surface operations hardware, will participate in research directly related to NASA's planned return to the Moon.
He has been with Wyle's Houston-based Integrated Science and Engineering Group for nearly three years and is a certified advanced open water SCUBA diver.
The Aquarius habitat is a remote underwater station used to provide a convincing analogue to space exploration.
NEEMO sends groups of NASA employees and contractors there to live for up to three weeks at a time. Crewmembers experience some of the same tasks and challenges underwater as they would in space.
Dr Abercromby's 14-day mission, officially titled NEEMO 14, is scheduled to run in the northern spring of 2010.
"We will conduct and participate in a variety of human research programme-related behavioural health and immunology studies," said Dr Abercromby.
The EVA Physiology, Systems and Performance project will continue the Human Research Programme-funded EVA performance protocol conducted during previous NEEMO missions in which the effects of EVA suit weight and centre of gravity on EVA performance is evaluated during a series of defined EVA tasks.
The Lunar Surface Systems objectives relate to the interaction of EVA crewmembers with the lunar electric rover and the lunar lander.
"We will perform a variety of tasks using mockups of the lunar electric rover and the lunar lander," said Abercromby. "Our work will include lander onloading and offloading, incapacitated crewmember transfer onto the lander deck and into the lunar electric rover, and evaluation of EVA and intravehicular activity performance under varying degrees of communications.
"These studies will directly inform lander design, lunar electric rover design, EVA suit design and lunar communications architecture decisions. Hopefully, NEEMO 14 will be the first of several missions in which we use these mockups to address these important questions."
Aquarius, located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and managed by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. It is deployed next to deep coral reefs 18.9 metres below the surface.
The laboratory is most often used by marine biologists, for whom Aquarius acts as home base as they study the coral reef, the fish and aquatic plants that live nearby and composition of the surrounding seawater.
Aquarius houses sophisticated lab equipment and computers, enabling scientists to perform research and process samples without leaving their underwater facilities.
Wyle provides information technology and engineering services to the federal government on long-term outsourcing contracts. The company also provides biomedical and engineering services for NASA's human space missions; test and evaluation of aircraft, weapon systems, networks, and other government assets; and other engineering services to the aerospace, defence, and nuclear power industries.
