At some point in the 2020s NASA wants to capture an asteroid and put it into a stable orbit near the moon. The next step will be to send a manned mission to explore and take geological samples from the asteroid. Because this type of mission has never been attempted before, it will mean new requirements for the astronauts and their equipment.

Space shuttle program veterans Stan Love and Steve Bowen, who have 62 hours of space walk experience between them, have been working with NASA engineers to help meet those new challenges.

On May 9, the two went into a 40-foot-deep pool in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a mockup of the Orion spacecraft that will carry the astronauts is docked with a mockup of the robotic craft that will be used to capture the asteroid.

“We’re working on the techniques and tools we might use someday to explore a small asteroid that was captured from an orbit around the sun and brought back by a robotic spacecraft to orbit around the moon. When it’s there, we can send people there to take samples and take a look at it up close. That’s our main task; we’re looking at tools we’d use for that, how we’d take those samples,” said Love in a statement.

Among other things, Love and Bowen tested modified space suits and a pneumatic hammer that could be used for collecting samples. NASA hopes to capture surface and core samples from the asteroid. Those samples should provide researchers with additional information about how and when the solar system was formed.