Fox News Flash top headlines for Sept. 16
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Now that's an Aquaman.
As NASA prepares for a return to the Moon in 2024, it's using a massive water tank to help prepare potential astronauts for the challenges that come with going into space.
The government agency noted that one of the tools it is using in prep for an eventual return is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA said it is in the "early stages" of evaluating how the astronauts would live and work on the Moon. The water environment allows them to move around, set up habitats, collect samples and deploy experiments, just as they would on the Moon.
"NASA astronauts wear weighted vests and backpacks to simulate walking on the Moon, which has one-sixth the gravity of Earth," NASA said in a blog post.
NBL Artemis Lunar Surface Simulation Development on Sept. 5, 2019. The pool is also used to train astronauts for spacewalks aboard the International Space Station. (NASA/Bill Brassard)
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The space agency added that astronauts Drew Feustel and Don Pettit are among those currently training in the pool, which is "used primarily to train astronauts for spacewalks aboard the International Space Station."
NASA's Artemis program, which is intended to land American astronauts on the Moon by 2024, also aims to establish a sustainable human presence on Earth’s natural satellite. The successor to the Apollo program, Artemis will also make history by landing the first woman on the Moon.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin – the second man to walk on the Moon – predicted the "Artemis" program would bring decades of progress, similar to what the U.S. saw with the Apollo program that launched him into space.
"The five decades of Apollo['s legacy] goes all the way from Apollo 1 through the successful landing, on up through Apollo 17 ... and now we're going to begin the decades of Artemis," he recently told Fox News as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.
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Fox News' James Rogers and Sam Dorman contributed to this story.