18th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations

Astronaut Aki Hoshide (right) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency  and European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet (left) during the 18th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), on 22 July 2014.

NASA’s underwater training missions are held off the coast of Florida and send astronauts 20 m below the sea to live in a makeshift space base where they conduct regular ‘waterwalks’ in scuba gear.

Thomas Pesquet has been assigned to be launched on a Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2016 for a long-duration mission to the International Space Station.