By Amy Crawford for Atlas Obscura
“We performed admirably,” Alina Szmant says.“We spent more hours in the water doing science than any of the male groups.”
Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program;
National Park Service
SZMANT WAS A GRADUATE STUDENT at Scripps Institution of Oceanography when she heard about an intriguing request for proposals put out by the U.S. Department of the Interior and NASA. They were looking for a team of scientists to spend two weeks in the Tektite underwater habitat, parked off the shore of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Named for a type of glassy pebble sometimes formed by meteorite impacts, Tektite consisted of two 18-foot-high metal cylinders connected at the base. Inside was a lab and storage space, a small kitchen with a Harvest Gold refrigerator and microwave, a tiny bathroom and no-frills bunks. Its original inhabitants, the year before, had been a team of male scientists whose primary research goal was to see whether they experienced any adverse effects from spending two months underwater.
“Man had walked on the moon, but NASA was thinking about longer missions,” Szmant explains. “They were interested in the medical and psychological side of things—what happens when people are isolated from society and have to live with only a few other people?”
NASA hoped that the undersea environment could stand in for space, and in a way it did.
Read more at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/women-aquanauts-tektite-ii
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