Md. Native Astronaut Reid Wiseman Documenting Underwater Mission Online

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- He spent months in space and now astronaut Reid Wiseman is spending a couple of weeks underwater.

Alex DeMetrick reports, it's a different kind of NASA mission for the Baltimore County native, who returned to Earth in 2014, and visited his old home in Cockeysville last year to speak to local children and encourage them to follow their dreams.

"This was my whole life before I went away to college, was this front yard and back yard," he said at the time. "It's really fantastic to come back. Who comes back to the house you grew up in and have this kind of welcome?"

But right now, Wiseman's home is an underwater station -- the Aquarius Reef Base, located 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean and five miles off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

It's where NASA is trying to work out some of the technological challenges of a Mars mission. He and the rest of the crew make up NEEMO-21, or the twenty-first mission of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.

And he's sharing the experience on social media, just like he did while he was aboard the International Space Station.

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• NASA