An Aquanaut Comes Home from an Undersea Space Station

Living in a green alien water world twenty-two feet below the surface of Key Largo, Florida, crew commander Dr. Michaela Musilova and her SEA STAR team spent five days isolated from the rest of the planet. Their home was Jules' Undersea Lab, a wet International Space Station analog where divers live continuously in a state of saturation.

Breathing air under pressure long enough for body tissues to absorb maximum inert gas meant living with constant loud life support noises, plumbing issues, and health concerns. Yet the confinement offered a rare perspective. Looking up at sun rays filtering through the water without being able to reach them triggered what Musilova calls an underview effect, mirroring the profound appreciation astronauts feel when viewing Earth from space.

Simulating space missions underwater offers a practical way to test human limits and technology without leaving the planet. Musilova led her crew through scientific projects relevant to long-duration spaceflight, including studies on cognitive abilities and reaction times under pressure. Crew members noticed their response times felt noticeably slower during the mission.

Executive Officer Paul Bakken managed internal pressures of logistical transfer containers, while Health & Safety Officer Dr.

Brandy Nunez and Mission Specialist Jenn Pint tested microgreens growth under varying pressure settings and developed taxonomies for crew interactions.

Our read is that extreme analog environments succeed precisely because they replicate the psychological friction of actual spaceflight, right down to the plumbing failures and sensory deprivation.

Testing how seeds suffer barotrauma from sudden pressure increases or how high school-developed environmental sensors perform under water gives researchers a cheap, accessible proxy for orbital hardships.

Returning to the surface required a long detour around the surrounding lagoon to let their bodies safely adjust to lower pressures and avoid decompression sickness.

Once they finally breached the surface, the aquanauts traded stuffy undersea air for fresh oxygen and warm Florida sunshine, closing out a mission that proved exploring the deep ocean remains one of the closest substitutes for leaving Earth altogether.