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News release

A celebration of international collaboration

Washington, D.C., United-States, June 16, 2010 – Last night, at the Canadian Technology Leader Dinner held at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC., former Canadian astronaut and aquanaut Dave Williams presented a special STS-118 mission montage to Mary Kicza, Head NOAA* NESDIS*, in celebration of the 200^th anniversary of the organisation. The montage bears the NEEMO* medallion and a copy of the NOAA 200^th Celebration emblem which Williams brought with him into space to the International Space Station in 2007. Richard (Rick) Howard, Deputy Chief Technologist at NASA, also attended this important event. The collaboration between NASA, NOAA and the Canadian Space Agency for NEEMO missions clearly demonstrates the value of international cooperation.

The NEEMO Medallion was designed to celebrate the collaboration between NASA and NOAA in the use of the Aquarius undersea habitat located off the coast of Key Largo in Florida. In 2001, Dave Williams was among the very first crew to take part in an undersea mission using the habitat as a research platform to test technologies and protocols that will support extended duration spaceflights.

NEEMO

Since the first undersea mission in 2001, 14 missions have taken place resulting in a number of scientific publications, test-evaluations of innovative space technologies, spacewalking techniques evaluations and rover capabilities in addition to critical training for astronauts in extremely hostile environment. Canadian astronauts Dave Williams (NEEMO 1 IN 2001, NEEMO 9 in 2006), Robert Thirsk (NEEMO 7 in 2004) and Chris Hadfield (NEEMO 14 in 2010) have all participated in undersea missions.
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NEEMO/index.html

DAVE WILLIAMS

Dave Williams is currently the Director of McMaster Centre for Medical Robotics at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and Professor in the Department of Surgery of Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. Williams was selected as a Canadian Space Agency astronaut in 1992 and took part in his first space mission in 1998 as part of mission STS-90. In 2007, he served as mission specialist for STS-118 to the International Space Station. He then performed three spacewalks spending 17 hours and 47 minutes outside the orbiting laboratory. He resigned as an active astronaut in March 2008.
www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/biowilliams.asp

*NOAA: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
*NESDIS: National Environmental Satellite, Data, an Information Service
*NEEMO: NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations

Richard (Rick) Howard, Deputy Chief Technologist at NASA, Mary Kicza, Head NOAA NESDIS and Dave Williams, former CSA astronaut (Credit: Embassy of Canada in Washington)

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