File:NEEMO 4 crew.jpg

English: Astronaut Scott Kelly (left), commander; space station support scientist Jessica Meir; Flight Director Paul Hill (third right); and astronaut Rex J. Walheim (second right) represent the crew of this year’s third NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission, scheduled Sept. 16-24. The quartet, accompanied here by two instructors, will serve as the NASA members of a crew that will live in the “Aquarius” Underwater Research Facility for nine days. The crew will use the undersea habitat as practice for long-duration space habitation, living in a volume similar to the habitation module of the International Space Station, conducting scientific research on the human body and coral reef environment off the coast of Key Largo, Fla., and building undersea structures to simulate space station assembly spacewalk activities. NEEMO is a joint project of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, which operates the Aquarius facility for NOAA.