There are two types of people aboard the research vessel Rachel Carson: There's me, quite sick and spending a good amount of time on the deck trying to keep an eye on the bobbing horizon, and there are the scientists minding the remotely operated vehicle dangling below us. Sitting in a chair with a joystick on the armrest, surrounded by glowing monitors in an otherwise darkened room, a pilot guides the SUV-sized robot through a galaxy of life--little fishes, free-swimming crustaceans, jellyfish, and other gelatinous critters that dart out of the way--stopping every so often to cross something off a species shopping list. Scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and its associated Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are on a methodical hunt for specimens for a new exhibit, Into the Deep, opening in the spring. It'll be loaded with exceedingly fragile, rarely seen animals kept healthy in life-support systems that aquarists have taken years to perfect. "Some of them we call'wet tissue paper,'" says Wyatt Patry, a senior aquarist, speaking of the species they're seeking.

A few months ago, NASA unveiled its next-generation space suit that will be worn by astronauts when they return to the moon in 2024 as part of the agency's plan to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. The Extravehicular Mobility Unit--or xEMU--is NASA's first major upgrade to its space suit in nearly 40 years and is designed to make life easier for astronauts who will spend a lot of time kicking up moon dust. It will allow them to bend and stretch in ways they couldn't before, easily don and doff the suit, swap out components for a better fit, and go months without making a repair. Instead, they're hidden away in the xEMU's portable life-support system, the astro backpack that turns the space suit from a bulky piece of fabric into a personal spacecraft. It handles the space suit's power, communications, oxygen supply, and temperature regulation so that astronauts can focus on important tasks like building launch pads out of pee concrete.