Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following is the text of an email that all NASA employees received from our administrator Charlie Bolden in recognition of the holiday honoring the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought it was a really nice reminder of Dr. King's courage, and his message of ...Read More
Fact: My Son Has Never Known A Time Without Humans Living In Space
My nine-year-old son has never known a time without humans living in space. In fact, my son has never known a time when the benefits of space exploration haven’t had a direct impact on the quality of his life here on Earth. I think that’s a pretty awesome thing!! How ...Read More
The Overview Effect: I Think It Works Both Ways
It’s been a long time since my last blog entry here on Fragile Oasis. Actually it’s been since March, which was right about the same time as my friend Ronnie Garan was getting ready to launch on his space station adventure to the ISS. In the past 5+ months that ...Read More
Love Our Planet!
Very simply, we have an obligation to take care of our planet, take care of each other.Read More
They say our love won't pay the rent - A prelaunch blog.
Here in quarantine, it’s been a lot like that morning wakeup scene from the movie Groundhog Day. Today we all hit the alarm clock again to the tune of Sonny & Cher ringing in our ears.Read More
World Space Week
World Space Week, October 4-10 To celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition" -- as declared by the United Nations General Assembly www.worldspaceweek.org Global recognition of the importance of space exploration and its benefits to life ...Read More
Anniversaries & Memories of My 1st Space Adventure
Saturday was the 1 year anniversary of the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery and her STS128 crew (and also, coincidentally, the 10 year anniversary of the day the class of 2000 astronauts arrived to Houston for astronaut training). This was the beginning of my first trip to space. I ...Read More
U2 & NASA Collaboration Video
I am such a huge fan of using creative approaches to spreading the good word about NASA to audiences that might not otherwise take notice. Thanks go out to U2 for sharing their excitement for our space program. Also, it was really cool to get to talk with Bono & ...Read More
Space Shuttle Tribute Posters
A collection of tribute posters to the Space Shuttle fleet. We should celebrate these magnificent space vehicles and their contribution to human space flight. For Columbia: This Tribute Display features Columbia, the “first of the fleet”, rising above earth at the dawn of the Space Shuttle Program. Crew-designed patches for ...Read More
'Dwelling' in Space
Thought I’d post an article and Q& A exchange I had with Bruce Sterling from Dwell Magazine while I was onboard ISS last year. Just a little insight to what it’s like “dwelling” on the space station. I really enjoyed the opportunity to share these things with a new audience. ...Read More
A Message from Mercury
This is a picture taken by the MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft, currently just inside the orbit of Mercury at less than 1/3 the distance of Earth from the Sun. It shows the Earth and Moon from 114 million miles away. The Earth and Moon are ...Read More
Virtual Reality
Preparing for a space walk involves a mix of really cool training. The place where most of the training for a space walk is done is called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab or NBL, aka a really big pool with a mockup of the space station and the space shuttle payload ...Read More
Docking is Cooperation
Yesterday our STS-133 crew had a rendezvous and docking class in the simulator. My memories of docking with the space station on STS-128 stand out for me because of the first beautiful view you get of the ISS as you approach and how it changes from this tiny pinpoint of ...Read More
My Fragile Oasis Debut Blog --- Thanks Ron!
This is my first blog entry on the Fragile Oasis site. My thanks to Ron Garan for inviting me to participate. I’m really happy to be a part of Fragile Oasis and hoping it will be another exciting way to spread the word about the very positive work that’s going ...Read More
Splashup +1 day
More debriefs and interviews today, and then we were set free. Felt a little weird to be wrapping it all up after the time it took to finally get here. I would like to close my journal by thanking my fellow crew members. We had a great team, we still ...Read More
Splashdown +16 days
It was a little strange waking up this morning and knowing that tonight will be the last night we spend on board Aquarius. I'm really pleased with how quickly Aquarius became such a comfortable place to live and work. It gives me hope that someday if I'm privileged to spend ...Read More
Splashdown +13 days
Easter Sunday on Aquarius. We woke up without an alarm and basically had the day off. We had a special celebration of Easter at the end of Ron's family conference. Ron called his friend Monsignor Sable in Rome and he shared some short Easter readings and prayers with us, blessed ...Read More
Splashdown +12 days
This morning we woke up to start another day filled with the CMAS1 EEG task. Unfortunately we had some equipment issues that prevented us from performing the tasks. Tim and Dave did a lot of troubleshooting that hopefully will help the principal investigators determine the cause of the problem. So ...Read More
Splashdown +11 days
Started the day with another SL17 dive. Dave and I went out this morning and both donned the lunar backpack config for the cg study and continued work on waterlab. I'm really enjoying the waterlab construction task, and also enjoyed participating in the cg study. On the way out as ...Read More
Splashdown +10 days
Waterlab was the focus of our morning today. Ron and Dave went out on the SL17 rigs and Lunar space suit back pack simulators, and Tim and I provided the ROV setup and IV support. With direction from us inside the habitat and from the crew, the ExPOC operated the ...Read More
Splashdown +9 days
It was pretty exciting to me to be here living and working on Aquarius on the 25th anniversary of STS-1. Makes me think about how far we've come with the space program, and how much we have to look forward to with the future exploration plans --- and it's pretty ...Read More
Splashdown +8 days
We woke up this morning and Tim and Ross showed us video of an amazing sight they had through the viewport window late last night. At night most of the lights are turned down in the habitat, but not off completely in case of an emergency. But it is much ...Read More
Splashdown +7 days
With the expert assistance of Jim and Ross, Tim and I got suited up first thing in the SL17 rig. Today was the first day of constructing Waterlab. Waterlab is a pvc structure that we put together to simulate a construction task in space. For our exploration analog we're treating ...Read More
Splashdown +6 days
Well…. Haven’t done my journal for today yet, but here are the highlights: Dawn dive – Beautiful!!! First session with remote surgery --- robot set up here and surgeon in Canada More to come next week!Read More
Splashdown +5 days
Today is Saturday, but we still have a pretty full schedule. Makes sense that when you have a limited amount of time in a mission like this, on such a specialized facility, and you want to complete as much science as possible, that you take advantage of all the days ...Read More
Splashdown +4 days
Had a great night's sleep last night and found myself very comfortable in my bunk this morning when the 06:00 alarm went off. It's very cool and now strangely reassuring to wake up every morning and have our friends the groupers still looking in on us! We got off to ...Read More
Splashdown +3 days
Today I celebrated my 9 year wedding anniversary at 60 feet undersea. Jim and Ross were kind enough to let me post an anniversary greeting to Chris so that he could see it on the cameras. I think it went over well. I'm very fortunate to have a family that ...Read More
Splashdown +2 days
Today we had a really nice mix of exploration and science activities on our schedule. Very busy, but fun stuff. Today was the first day we got to fly the remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) 'Scuttle' around outside the habitat. We flew it as the operator from inside the habitat and our ...Read More
Splashdown +1 day
Had a great first night's sleep in my Aquarius bunk. If you pay attention during the day, you can hear a constant crackling sound from outside on the hull (sounds a lot like the embers of a fire crackling as it goes out). At night, when everything is quiet and ...Read More
Splashdown!
Splashdown!!!!! (10:37 am) It's still a little hard to believe this day is finally here! This morning we were blessed with a very different sea state than we had during our training week -- it was beautiful! No more than 1-2 foot seas; as far as we were concerned it ...Read More
Splashdown-3
This morning we met with the entire team for a Mission Briefing -- basically just covered all the different science and exploration objectives for the mission. We followed the briefing with a tour of the decompression chamber they have on site here at the NURC facility. From everything we can ...Read More
Splashdown-4
Another beautiful day in Key Largo. We had our briefing today on the habitat systems and emergency operations. Really a very cool facility. Otter led us through a virtual tour of the facility and gave us a very thorough brief on the layout and system operation. Most of the time ...Read More
Splashdown-5
Started our day again with some more crew pictures, and then off again to some briefings. For the mission we're going to be diving with 2 different kinds of rigs -- a SCUBA setup with a full face comm mask, and a fully enclosed helmet rig called the SL (superlite) ...Read More
Splashdown-6
Day 3 of training. This morning we took our big team picture on one of the dive boats. After that we spent some time with Otter and Ross going over some of the major safety and emergency stuff for the mission. We also talked about the kind of things we ...Read More
Splashdown-7
Today was our first day of dive training. We started the day with a really nice briefing to introduce all of the NEEMO 9 team members. We have a lot of really interesting and talented people supporting this mission. Jim Buckley and Ross Hein will be our habitat technician crew ...Read More
Splashdown-8
First day of training -- primarily devoted to refresher on some of the science hardware we'll be using and for me the first time seeing the SRI M7 surgical robot that we'll be using. Tim and I practiced together with the ultrasounds on quadriceps tendons and knees -- apparently I ...Read More
Splashdown-9
Travel to Miami/Key Largo for start of NEEMO 9 training week. Dave and Ron and I were all on the same flight to Miami; Tim met us in Key Largo. We got to the condo in KL at ~7pm, picked up Tim and went to dinner at a local place ...Read More
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