NEEMO 5 team. View video interviews with the NEEMO 5 aquanauts and read their journals.

NEEMO 5

NEEMO 5 was the longest and most challenging mission to date. The NEEMO 5 crew's mission began with splashdown on June 16 and ended with decompression and splash-up on Sunday, June 29, 2003.

The Crew

The NEEMO 5 crew included three astronauts -- Clayton Anderson, Garrett Reisman and Peggy Whitson -- and Emma Hwang, a NASA scientist from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

• Mission Timeline (148 Kb PDF)
• NEEMO 5 Journals
• NEEMO 5 Imagery

A crewmember photographed this sea turtle near the sea floor.	Crewmembers practice underwater for long-duration space habitation.	Astronaut/aquanaut Peggy A. Whitson performs an extravehicular activity.

Mission Objectives

Objectives of the mission included experiencing living conditions similar to those on the Space Station; developing new ways of interacting with researchers from a remote laboratory location; developing a communications system for use when a spacewalking crew is working at a significant distance from the habitat; and exercising teambuilding, interpersonal and leadership skills.

Living in microgravity for days or months can cause a number of physiological, psychological and behavioral changes, both during flight and after landing. To gather additional data on some of these effects, the NEEMO 5 crew participated in 12 research activities. These include a study of how their environment affects sleep and the body’s immune system, the growth of bacteria in the habitat, the use of wireless medical monitoring equipment and nutrition-related studies.

They also tested a piece of equipment that could be used by future spacewalkers. The In-suit Doppler was used to look for nitrogen bubbles in the blood stream, which could provide an early warning of possible decompression sickness.