NASA
astronaut Sunita Williams made a unique ship-to-ship phone call from the
International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to check in with six aquanauts
living at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Williams,
an ISS Expedition 15 flight engineer, called a NASA crew of divers,
doctors and astronauts working aboard the Aquarius undersea laboratory,
where a series of robotic surgery tests and spacesuit mobility
experiments are underway.
"You guys
are in one of the prettiest parts of the world," Williams told
the Aquarius crew from her perch 220 miles (354 kilometers) above Earth.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, the Aquarius crew is
completing two weeks of underwater living under NASA's Extreme Environment
Mission Operations 12 (NEEMO 12) expedition. Aquarius sits more than 62 feet (18
meters) underwater off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.
"We are
doing great," Stefanyshyn-Piper told Williams, adding that her crew will return
to the Earth's surface early Friday.
NASA
astronaut Jose Hernandez, flight surgeon Josef Schmid and Tim Broderick, a
gastrointestinal surgeon from the University of Cincinnati, are serving aboard
Aquarius with Stefanyshyn-Piper. Professional divers James
Talacek and Dominic Landucci, of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington
that operates Aquarius for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
complete the NEEMO 12 crew.
The
aquanauts took a familiar face to the ocean floor with them in the shape of the
flat image of a Jack
Russell terrier named Gorby, the beloved dog of Williams.
"That's
awesome, thank you so much for taking Gorby with you," Williams told the
Aquarius crew. "It's really cool to see him."
Williams
has lived aboard the ISS for more than five months and is due
to return in mid-June during NASA's STS-117 shuttle mission to the orbital
laboratory. She is also a former Aquarius aquanaut and spent seven days
underwater during NASA's NEEMO 2 mission
in May 2002.
"I think NEEMO
was, for me, a great precursor for coming up here," Williams told the Aquarius
crew of the ISS. "It's very much a great parallel and I think it's a great warm
up for anybody coming up to live on the space station."
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