From Tektite to Artemis: 50th Anniversary Women Undersea Mission

IAF Human Spaceflight Symposium (B3), Human Spaceflight Global Technical Session (9-GTS.2)

Sarah Jane Pell & Tierney Thys

In 1970, Sylvia Earle led the first all-women undersea habitat crew: Tektite II Mission 6 at a depth of 15m in the U.S. Virgin Island's Great Lameshur Bay. Aquanauts Renate True (dec.), Ann Hurley, Alina Szmant, Peggy Lucas Bond and Sylvia Earle undertook extensive research into the ecology of algae and coral reef fishes and contributed to studies in decompression tables, saturation diving, human physiology and psychology in extreme environments. To mark the 50th Anniversary in 2020, Sarah Jane Pell, Tierney Thys, Nicole Stott, Kristen Todd and Shawna Pandya planned to descend to Aquarius Reef Base for a 10-day undersea mission to pair new technology demonstrations with deep cultural engagement on undersea habitability and environmental action. Covid-19 restrictions postponed their plans to splashdown. Instead, Pell and Thys curated a two-day public virtual event Tektite 2020: Women of Sea and Space for connecting the original pioneering team for the first time in decades, with 50 accomplished women and men of sea and space. This report records the reflections of the Aquanauts to understand the practical, political, social and environmental and personal impact of the Tektite Program and together re-imagine forthcoming missions and tomorrow's Sea-Space exploration. The 1970s team shared operational objectives, processes, performances, and personalities corresponding to the interaction between the remote science and operation teams, program stakeholders, the media, and their discovery in the environment. Several themes emerged highlighted in this report as critical for advancing programs from Tektite to Artemis and beyond. These included human factors: matters of access, inclusion, diversity, creativity, responsibility, good communication and expeditionary skills; and ecological priority. Speakers stressed harnessing ocean awareness from memory to consciousness, sentience to signature state-of-the-art, with projects from cooperative robotics to aquatic dance, microclimates to micro-biomes, space operating systems to bioregenerative marine systems, hardware to wetware, human health to ocean health, producing or re-defining political, philosophical, technical and memorable eco-poetic art. Deeper insights included opportunities for discovery and knowledge afforded by transdisciplinary practices and applying living planet principals to activities on Earth, in Space, and in partnership. This report offers an historic archive of perspectives celebrating the achievements of 50-years of women undersea and may benefit a range of stakeholders to further redefine our essential relationship with our ocean planet. It recommends the ocean equivalent of an International Space Station - as the Tektite Program was - for excellence in advanced life support systems, global cooperation, in-situ research and radical custodianship.

This paper (IAC-20,B3,9-GTS.2,6,x56227) has been accepted to the 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) – The CyberSpace Edition, 12-14 October 2020, B3. IAF HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT SYMPOSIUM, 9-GTS.2. Human Spaceflight Global Technical Session.

Copyright 2020 by Sarah Jane Pell. All rights reserved.

LunAres III (SPECTRA): Trident oil Ring Main Unit (RMU) High Voltage Switch EVA and VR to support future work in on-site lunar power distribution.

31st IAA Symposium on Space and Society (E5), Virtual Presentations (VP)

Sarah Jane Pell

The prominent design of LunAres III (SPECTRA) lunar analogue mission focused on putting into practice systems thinking, innovation and human factors in the operations of a remote lunar outstation. For example, a high-fidelity simulated Loss of Power [LoP] emergency scenario that required the manual operation of the Trident oil Ring Main Unit (RMU) hardware in a dark simulation crater under time-tagged and evaluation pressures. The EVA comprised of three stages: the build, the training, and the procedure. 1) Lucy Electric LLC builds industrial electrical equipment. Products such as a High Voltage Switch will be required for a lunar power distribution system. We installed a Trident oil Ring Main Unit (RMU) in LunAres to evaluate the crew ability to safely manually operate the machinery within a Loss of Power (LoP) scenario in the darkened crater. 2) Practon Group develop training for operating the Trident fixed FRMUs with VR developers Sentient Computing. All crew learn to the operate equipment via paper-based manuals, and presenter-teaching models. Two crew members have additional VR training. 3) Two days later, the Mission Commander signals to the Flight Director to initiate two scheduled surprise (simulated) power-outages which required Emergency Loss of Power (LoP) response EVAs. Crew had to locate tools, find the Trident oil RMU and safely restore power to the habitat life support system without assistance in a set time. Teams were assessed on readiness for problem-solving under pressure, mechanical operation, teamwork, recall and understanding of new technical knowledge to derive insights for future training. Crew provided vital user-experience feedback, and technology partners examined opportunities for a formal study under controlled conditions, and comparative space analogue mission simulation sites. A post-mission review conducted by the author/mission commander and the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform investigated further tools for immersive visualisation /representation of the performance data including real-time multi-person keypoint detection to support future work in augmented assistive technologies for complex high-risk operational planning of lunar power distribution.

This interactive presentation (IAC-20,E5,VP,6,x56228) has been accepted to the 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) – The CyberSpace Edition, 12-14 October 2020, E5. 31st IAA SYMPOSIUM ON SPACE AND SOCIETY, VP. Virtual Presentations.

Copyright 2020 by Sarah Jane Pell. All rights reserved.

This paper includes work from the Performing Astronautics project assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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