Dr. Dominic D’Agostino, an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida is getting ready to be an aquanaut.

  • Dr. D'Agostino is an Associate Professor at USF Morsani College of Medicine
  • Mission will examine how crew responds in extreme environments
  • Mission begins June 18 six miles off the coast of Key Largo

"I’m very excited to be an aquanaut,” said Dr. D’Agostino. “An aquanaut defined as being in saturation for more than a day."

D'Agostino, an Associate Professor at USF Morsani college of Medicine, will be part of a crew made up of NASA and European Space Agency members taking part in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 22 expedition.

"Understand human physiology in extreme environments and to also kind of test various procedures and equipment that is destined, I guess you could say, for deep space missions,” said Dr. D’Agostino, describing the goal of the expedition.

The crew will be sixty feet underwater for ten days, spending time in an space the size of a 30-foot RV. They’ll conduct simulated spacewalks, test time-delayed communication and try various tools and procedures for future space missions.

"In that habitat, we’ll be suited up in a way that we’ll be weighted down to simulate fairly close analog to the weight that will be on a lunar surface or on mars surface,” said Dr. D’Agostino. “And we’ll be conducting and using equipment that will be similar to equipment that’s used if we land on Mars."

Research will also be gathered on how the crew responds in the extreme environment, including sleep, heart rate and cognitive tasks.

D’Agostino is humbled to be part of the crew.

"I am very excited to learn from them and to work with them on this mission to collect as much data as possible," he said.

The mission begins June 18 off the coast of Key Largo.