,To learn more about Aquarius visit www.OneWorldOneOcean.org Life support buoy at surface provides power, 100 mbps connectivity air, communications, and What Is Aquarius? support equipment. for broadcast quality streaming video, and The only undersea research lab allowing scientists call capability to Built in Victoria, TX, in 1986. to live underwater for up to 2-week missions. international space Since 1993, the lab has station in orbit. supported 114 missions. 50 FT. 43 FT. 86-ton steel chamber, © Stephen Frink © Stephen pressure rated to Kitchen, lab and bunks 120 feet for 6, in 400 sq. ft. space. deep. 95 FT. Additional air tanks on Moon pool allows seafloor within 1000 ft. aquanauts to enter/leave without A diver approaches the Aquarius reef base. Located four miles from airlocks or hatches. Key Largo, in a “research Owner: National Oceanic and Operator: University of only” zone on Conch Reef, Mission aquanauts Atmospheric Administration North Carolina Wilmington Florida Keys National living in Aquarius can (NOAA) (UNCW) Marine Sanctuary. stay indefinitely and FLORIDA have 6 to 9 hours of diving down to about KEY LARGO SHORE BASE 95 feet each day Partners: NASA, US Navy Participants: 1266 astronauts, scientists, and grad students from 205 AQUARIUS Houses the world’s most in depth institutions. coral reef monitoring program. A Five Fold Mission Living Underwater ■ Scientific research: Hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific ■ Saturation diving: Aquarius maintains the underwater papers. Cancer drugs Ara-C and Halaven were both derived pressure of 2.5 atmospheres, so divers don’t have to form sea sponges (Aquarius is one of the top sea sponge decompress until the mission is over. This allows individual research facilities in the world). scuba dives of 9 hrs, instead of the typical 1-2 hour surface- ■ Coral reef & ocean observation: 20 years of in-depth based dives. Scientists can accomplish in 9 days what might research on coral reefs, providing much of what we know of take 6-12 months otherwise. “It’s a time machine,” said shallow reef ecosystems. Site of the first underwater use of a Aquarius veteran, Dr. Mark Patterson. mass spectrometer on a coral reef, which analyzes every ■ Decompression: Before returning to the surface after a chemical flowing over the reef in real time. mission, aquanauts decompress inside Aquarius for 16 hours, ■ Training: NASA astronaut training, to simulate extreme, during which they can continue working, then ascend to the isolated space environment. surface directly. ■ Ocean education and outreach: Live broadcasts from a single 16-day mission reached 450,000 students. Two JASON Funding expeditions reached 1 million students. ■ The program receives $2.5 million annually from a National ■ R&D of undersea technology: Development of various technol- Undersea Research Program grant, which ends this year, ogies for ocean exploration, including Remotely Operated down from a previous annual budget of $18 million. The final Vehicles and pioneering underwater measurement of UV light. mission is slated for July 2012. .