Astronaut / Ocean to Orbit

The International Space Station, ISS, serves both as a huge laboratory in orbit around the Earth and as a home for astronauts in space.

The instruments on board the ISS are important to scientists here on Earth, but even more important to the astronauts - it's what keeps them alive.

When there are problems with these instruments, the astronauts may need to repair them, which requires them to go outside the ISS. On a spacewalk.

Back in 2013, there were problems with a system on the space station that is critical to the survival of astronauts. NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy was sent on an emergency spacewalk that saved the space station.

Like all astronauts, he had been trained for just such a situation - but how can astronauts here on Earth prepare to work in the weightlessness of space?

In the film NASA in Deep Water, we take a look into the high-tech world of NASA and explore how underwater training can simulate astronauts' work in outer space.

We watch as NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, who like Andreas Mogensen was captain of the ISS, trains for his crucial spacewalk in a giant swimming pool.

Together with NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, we dive deep below sea level to the Aquarius underwater base to prepare the astronauts for their everyday life on the space station, isolated from the outside world.