Astronaut for Hire

Halfway through the R/V Falkor expedition to map the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, we have traveled nearly 4000 km and mapped many areas, including the Rogatien Ridge and the Gardner Pinnacles . Along the way, we have to take turns keeping watch for whales and diverting the ship away from them if necessary in order to maintain a safe distance due to the ship's active sonar. My turn taking watch is usually the hour before and after dinner out on the ship's upper deck , which means I get to witness many spectacular sunsets and moonrises. My colleagues on the sunrise whale watches have remarked at how bright Venus can be. This got me thinking about just how similar mapping the seafloor is to mapping the surface of Venus. Can you tell which of the two pictures below is from Earth's seafloor and which is from Venus? Both are backscatter images. One is produced by radar and the other by sonar, but the principle is the same. You send a pulse of ener...

The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument encompasses a vast area larger than all U.S. national parks combined. As I mentioned last time , We came here on the R/V Falkor to map the seafloor around the islands, atolls, reefs, and seamounts that comprise the Northwestern Hawaiian Island chain within the monument. Ultimately, we want to gain a better understanding of the geological processes that helped shape this part of the world. As the ship cruises along at around 10 knots, we operate three different data collection systems. First, we have a multibeam sonar that pings the seafloor with sound to give us a picture of what the ocean bottom looks like. Then, we have a gravimeter , which detects minute gravity variations that tell us what is beneath the seafloor surface. Finally, our magnetometer measures the Earth’s magnetic field along our path and provides information on the relative ages of seafloor features. On this cruise, we are using a Geometrics G-882 magnetometer p...

What if we could explore far off corners of the world just like the famous luck dragon Falkor in the classic book and movie The Neverending Story ? The Schmidt Ocean Institute launched the R/V Falkor to do just that. Funded by Google's deep pockets, this private research ship is charged with exploring uncharted depths of the sea and offers scientists competitive opportunities to conduct their own research expeditions along the way. Since we know more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do our own ocean , this is a very timely mission. All data collected on the Falkor is made freely available to the public in order to best advance knowledge about the regions it explores. I have had the good fortune to take part in two cruises aboard the Falkor. Last month, I participated in a short 3-day training cruise to the Maui Nui area, and now I am one week into a 36-day cruise to map the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) (aka: Northwestern Hawaii...

The Mashable Social Good Summit ( #2030NOW ) provided a forum for discussion of big ideas to make the world a better place. I took special interest in their "Ocean vs. Space: Which Is the True Final Frontier?" event, which pitted Alex Hall of the Google Lunar XPRIZE ( #TeamSpace ) against her colleague Dr. Paul Bunji of the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE ( #TeamOcean ). What ensued was an engaging conversation about the relative merits of exploring our planet's ocean and space beyond. It wasn't as confrontational as the title made it out to be, as both Hall and Bunji held great affection for the other's area of exploration. Mashable's summary of the 15-minute debate covers the high points, but I encourage you to watch it for yourself: So what do you think is the Final Frontier, the ocean or space?

In a historic solo dive to the bottom of the world, famed filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence James Cameron descended 35,756 feet (6.77 miles/10.89 km) to reach the " Challenger Deep ," the ocean's deepest point located in the Mariana Trench some 200 miles (322 km) southwest of Guam on Monday, March 26.  The descent voyage took two hours and 36 minutes from 5:15 a.m. until 7:52 a.m. local time. In his specially designed submersible DEEPSEA CHALLENGER , Cameron spent about three hours on the seafloor collecting photos and samples for scientific research in marine biology, microbiology, astrobiology, marine geology, and geophysics.  In another first, he also tweeted from the seafloor under a crushing pressure of 16,285 psi (112,280 kPa). The vehicle surfaced at 12:00 noon local time and was retrieved by the Ship Mermaid Sapphire . Photo by Mark Thiessen/National Geographic. (shown with permission) Filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-in-R...

"With space long ago reached by man, and commercial spaceflight tantalizingly close, the last great challenge for humans is to reach and explore the depths of our planet's oceans." Sir Richard Branson made that statement shortly after announcing Virgin Oceanic earlier this year.  With this week's dedication of Spaceport America and the start of NASA's latest NEEMO Mission , the seemingly unrelated topics of spaceflight and aquanauts are all abuzz on the interwebs. Nowhere do these two ideas converge better than in Virgin Oceanic . Realizing that more than  95% of the Earth's oceans are unexplored , Virgin Oceanic hopes to ignite public excitement in ocean exploration by venturing to the deepest points on Earth.  In the process, we'll learn a great deal about those environments and ourselves.  As submersible technology improves, this could lead to a whole new realm of possibility for humans to explore our home planet. Today, I have the distinct p...

I've been busy this past week training at Survival Systems USA in Groton, CT.  Completing Dunker Training and Sea Survival courses has prepared me and my fellow Astronauts4Hire (A4H) candidates well for emergency situations involving water landings, which are the most common spaceflight abort contingency scenarios.  Here's what we've done so far: Day 1 After half a day of classroom instruction on emergency preparation, we practiced inversion dunking in the Shallow Water Egress Trainer (SWET).  While this may seem like some type of waterboarding torture device, the SWET is actually a very important trainer for helping one confront the fear of drowning in order to remain calm and safely egress a submerged aircraft.  I learned that I can experience quite a lot of anxiety before being dunked upside down underwater, so this training was important for me to learn how to manage that apprehension so I could get myself to safety.  

Reid Stowe Imagine spending 1152 days at sea with no land in site, living off only the provisions you brought with you. That's just what adventurer Reid Stowe did from April 2007 to June 2010 when he drifted the seas in his 70-foot schooner on an expedition called the " Mars Ocean Odyssey " with the bold intention of demonstrating how a small crew could handle the isolation on a trip to Mars. Stowe's record-breaking voyage roughly simulated the duration of an opposition-class mission to Mars, which is the most favored scenario for most Mars mission planners. After 244 days in isolation, the Mars500 crew went into virtual orbit around Mars this week, which signifies the near halfway point of their simulated conjunction-class Mars mission. They will "land" on the surface on February 12 in what is sure to be an exciting event. Both the Stowe and Mars500 missions can teach us a great deal about the psychological factors crews will face when undergo...

With Earth's ever-expanding human population putting pressure on its limited resources, it's only a matter of time before we get serious about seeking out new real estate to colonize. I think it's inevitable that one day we'll spread out across the solar system and indeed the galaxy, but in the meantime, the 70% of the planet covered by water is prime for exploration, exploitation, and inhabitation. I'm proud to announce that I have been selected as a crewmember to the Atlantica I Expedition planned for July 2013.  Spending five days beneath the sea, I'll earn my aquanaut credentials along with a distinguished crew of highly accomplished individuals .  You can read my Atlantica bio here .

The two most compelling frontiers of exploration in the 21st century are the oceans and space. Humans have been exploring the surface of the sea for thousands of years and the edge of space for the past half-century, but technology developments are just beginning to allow for the exploration of the deep oceans and worlds beyond our own. In this post, I will offer some of my observations on the practical similarities between ocean and space exploration. Safety on deck aboard the Okeanos Explorer I imagine life at sea is very similar to life in space. In both cases, you live and work in close quarters with small crews. You rely upon each other's training and expertise to maintain the vessel’s complex systems including propulsion, navigation, life support, and equipment supporting the scientific mission. Clear divisions of responsibility are required so that everyone knows his or her job, but cross-training is also important so crewmembers can fill multiple roles. It is als...

By the time we pull into port in Hawaii, the Okeanos Explorer ’s EM 302 multibeam system will have mapped more than 8000 linear kilometers of the seafloor during the summer 2010 transit cruises to/from Guam and Hawaii. The two cruise legs followed parallel, adjacent but non-overlapping tracks in order to maximize the possibility for finding new things. I have had the pleasure of being on board for the second transit cruise from Guam to Hawaii for the past 11 days (3 to go). Below are three of the many features of interest I spotted along the transit path. Note that the preliminary interpretations I provide here are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Okeanos Explorer or the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research . 1. Landslides Both transits passed over a large flat-topped guyot about 500 km east of the Mariana Trench. The feature is about 20 km wide at the top and 50 km across at the base in the east-west direction. The steep-walled cliffs...

"Hello, Houston. This is Odyssey. It's good to see you again." --Tom Hanks as Astronaut Jim Lovell in Apollo 13 After a 6-day communications blackout, the Okeanos Explorer has emerged from the satellite coverage hole in the central Pacific.  Just past the halfway point of our cruise, we’ve traveled more than 2400 miles through two time zones. Nobody likes Mondays, but we had the distinct privilege of repeating Monday this week as we crossed the International Date Line. The crew had a fun ceremony yesterday to mark the occasion and admit new inductees into the Order of the Golden Dragon .  We had to answer a series of trivia questions about the Okeanos Explorer .  For each one we got correct, we advanced a pace forward towards the symbolic International Date Line. The first to cross won a special prize.   Although I answered the most questions, a last-minute upset by the ship’s Chief Medical Officer denied me of the prize.  This is my second time standin...

Ahoy! I've had a very enjoyable first three days getting used to life at sea aboard the Okeanos Explorer .  I've gained a new appreciation for what it means to lead the life of a mariner and be a seafloor mapper. As we sailed out of Guam's Apra Harbor, we spent the first half of day 1 conducting safety drills, which included fire, man overboard, abandon ship, and security. Man overboard was an interesting drill because everyone has to go outside and point to the victim no matter what direction the ship turned. A smaller boat was launched to go get the person, and that boat's driver uses everyone's pointing hands on the main ship to show him where to go. For the abandon ship drill, you have to don your life jacket, grab your survival suit, and meet at your designated life boat. We also tried on our survival suits to make sure they fit. Here's a photo of me wearing mine. You can see why people often call these "Gumby" suits. The purpose of the s...

Bon voyage!  I'm off to go explore the seafloor! Tomorrow I'll get on a plane bound for Guam where I'll rendezvous with the NOAA Okeanos Explorer and catch a ride back to Hawaii on the ship.  The trans-Pacific journey will last 14 days, during which time my job will be to help map the seafloor.  We will travel a 6100 km (3800 mi) great circle path from Guam to Oahu, crossing the Mariana Trench , the abyssal plain , seamounts and ridge systems.  In the process, I'll experience life on the vessel firsthand and report on it here on my blog. Click for a wider view.  You can follow the actual position of the ship in real time here or   here .

What is gravity like on the Mars compared to the Moon or an asteroid? See for yourself in this really cool video made by Astronaut Chris Hadfield and crewmates on the NEEMO-14 mission at the NOAA Aquarius Reef Base . If you're curious to learn more about the underwater habitat, check out the NEEMO-14 overview video and video tour of Aquarius too. For more great information on the NEEMO-14 mission, check out their Flickr photos , YouTube videos , Twitter profile , Facebook page , and mission support blog . Stay turned for a future post with more on aquanaut opportunities!

Space may be the final frontier, but 95% of the Earth's oceans remain unexplored. The deep ocean could hold the keys to the origin of life and studying it could enable technological and economic benefits to humanity. That's why the 2001 Presidential Panel on Ocean Exploration recommended that the "U.S. undertake a national program in ocean exploration in which discovery and the spirit of challenge are the cornerstones." NOAA responded by creating the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research , the great Ocean Explorer educational website, and the Okeanos Explorer ship. I had the priviledge of touring the Okeanos Explorer earlier today. It's worthwhile to distinguish what NOAA means by "exploration" in this context. Exploration is the discovery of new things, not necessarily the detailed study of them. By focusing on exploration, the Okeanos Explorer ("EX" for short), is generating hypotheses rather than answering them. It takes syste...

The past day and a half has passed in a blur of activity responding to the Chile earthquake and Pacific tsunami . I was awake for 40 hours working almost nonstop at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) and only took a small break for about two hours on Saturday afternoon. The total elapsed time from our first to last tsunami bulletins was 27 hours - a record long event for us. It may have been exhausting, but it was rewarding work knowing that something I was doing was making a difference. This was, after all, the first Pacific-wide tsunami warning since 1964!  Below is a photo of one of our displays in the operations center showing estimated tsunami travel time contours just before the tsunami was due to strike Japan:

Five years ago a tremendous tragedy fell upon people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean. I'm referring of course to the 26 December 2004 earthquake and tsunami that claimed over 230,000 lives. Today I will reflect upon the event and how far we've advanced since then with an emphasis on how space technologies can aid in tsunami warning.  Currently, tsunami warning systems do not rely heavily upon space technologies other than for communications, but there are several promising new techniques that could dramatically improve our tsunami detection capabilities in the future. The massive 2004 earthquake occurred at the Sunda Trench , which is a subduction zone about 300 kilometers west of the Sumatra, Indonesia where the Indo-Australian Plate slides beneath the Burma Plate in the eastern Indian Ocean.  The shaking from the huge earthquake lasted nearly 10 minutes (the longest ever observed), and the fault ruptured along an area spanning almost 1600 kilometers (also the l...

With last month's earthquakes and tsunamis in Samoa on Sept. 29 and Vanuatu on Oct. 7 , the spotlight has been on my workplace. The Samoa event produced the first tsunami casualties on American soil since the 1975 Hawaii tsunami . 34 people died in American Samoa and about 160 more in neighboring Samoa. This has spurred a lot of recent visits by the news media, school groups, concerned citizens, and several government review panels. The tsunamis were also popular on Twitter . CNN.com even wrote an article about me that was their top story for a few hours. I usually keep this blog focused on my astronaut aspirations, but today I'll break tradition and write about my job. For the uninitiated, I work as a Geophysicist at NOAA's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Ewa Beach, Hawaii . I have been here 4 years and in that time have gained a great deal of experience during more than 10 significant tsunami events.  Founded in 1949 , PTWC was the world's first...

If I can take off my Mars explorer hat for a moment and put on my seismologist hat, I'd like to clear up something with everyone. We can't predict earthquakes or tsunamis. It's not currently scientifically possible to say when an earthquake or tsunami will happen. Based on probabilistic analysis, we can guess where they are likely to happen, but constraining when is not (yet) possible. Why do I bring this up? Because for the past two months there has been a rumor circulating on the internet that a tsunami will happen on July 22. The basic premise behind the claim is that the combined gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon pulling on the Earth's tectonic plates during the July 22 lunar eclipse will cause a major quake. The author of the tsunami hoax (as it's being called) took some NASA data of the eclipse path across the Pacific and compared where it crossed tectonic plate margins. Based on when the maximum eclipse would pass over the area (and factor...