Getting ready to enter the water on a practice dive in the ocean offshore from Key Largo are.

Getting ready to enter the water on a practice dive in the ocean offshore from Key Largo are Tara Ruttley (below) and Nick Patrick (above). The two are members of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 6 (NEEMO-6) mission team. Ruttley is a biomedical engineer. The others are astronauts John Herrington, mission commander, and Doug Wheelock. The NEEMO-6 mission involves exposing an astronaut/scientist crew to a real mission experience in an extreme environment - the NOAA undersea station Aquarius - to prepare for future space flight. Spacewalk-like diving excursions and field-tests on a variety of biomedical equipment are designed to help astronauts living aboard the International Space Station. To prepare for their 10-day stay, the team had dive training twice a day at the Life Support Buoy, anchored above Aquarius.