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	+ Home		+ NASA Home > Mission Sections > NEEMO > NEEMO 9 Print This Email This NEEMO 9 CDR Dave Williams Training Week Journal Image above: Astronauts Ron Garan and Dave Williams, University of Cincinnati physician Tim Broderick and astronaut Nicole Stott prepare for their stay inside the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory. Credit: NASA Sunday, March 26, 2006 Today was our first day of training in our final week before the mission. The crew arrived from Houston and Cincinnati Saturday evening and we did our food shopping for the first few days of training. We are staying in a condo at the National Undersea Research Center (NURC) and the facilities are excellent. NURC is affiliated with the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) and runs the Aquarius undersea habitat. Crew wake-up was at 7 a.m. with an hour for breakfast, e-mail and preparation for the training. Training started at 8 a.m. with Tim, Ron, Nicole and I spending two hours reviewing the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) 3 Ortho experiment. This experiment is to evaluate whether non-physicians and physicians can be given directions from a remote specialist (tele-mentored) to manage broken bones in the lower leg. Instead of using a cast, the crew will use an external fixator, similar to a K’Nex set, to immobilize the broken bones. We then split into two groups with Ron and me learning to set-up the surgical robot while Tim and Nicole learned how to use an ultrasound to look for simulated injuries in the knee. We then switched places and finished off the morning with Mexican food for lunch. After lunch, the crew got back together to learn about using small robots with small cameras attached that can be inserted into the abdomen to help surgeons see what they are doing as they perform keyhole surgery!! Finishing off the day we were briefed on our Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), an underwater rover that we will drive around the bottom of the ocean to recover simulated samples of moon rocks. Tomorrow promises to be pretty exciting as we start our SCUBA training with the technical diving gear we will use as aquanauts during the mission.         NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 9 "As I write this a large sea turtle just decided to park its belly on our main view port (where I'm presently sitting)." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 8 "This marks the first time in human history an entire robotic surgical platform was transported to an extreme environment ... and was manipulated successfully from afar." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 7 "There is nothing quite like the transition from a warm bed to a cold wetsuit to wake you up in the morning!" + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 6 "The EEG net leaves a particularly attractive series of marks on the subject's head-- looks like we have been kissed by an octopus." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 5 "It's ... incredible to watch the sunset from 47 feet beneath the surface." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 4 "Today was a day filled with outreach events, both 'educational' (to school children) and 'public affairs' (to media)." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 3 "One of the highlights of the day was our videoconference with Jeff Williams and Bill McArthur on the International Space Station." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 2 "Today at 10:38 a.m. Ron Garan, Nicole Stott, and Tim Broderick joined an elite group of people in this world who have spent 24 hours under the sea in 'saturation,' making them the world's three newest aquanauts." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Mission Journal Number 1 "I'm looking forward to my first night of 'sleeping with the fishes.'" + Read More     NEEMO 9 Training Journal Number 6 "The mission as planned will be the most complex and longest NEEMO and Aquarius mission to date." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Training Journal Number 5 "It was an interesting experience talking to one another and looking out the windows into the ocean while standing on the bottom at 60 feet!!" + Read More     NEEMO 9 Training Journal Number 4 "Ross ... intentionally swam Nicole and I around in circles to try and get us lost. He did a pretty good job!" + Read More     NEEMO 9 Training Journal Number 3 "The pace is beginning to pick-up with more diving tasks being added every day." + Read More     NEEMO 9 Training Journal Number 2 "On our way out, we saw a pod of dolphins which started following the boat and leaping out of the waves." + Read More
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