Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Now on the BBC World Service, it's Witness History, firsthand accounts of the events that shaped our world.

I'm Laura Fitzpatrick, and today I'm taking you back to the summer of 1970, just a few months after NASA's Apollo 13 space mission

almost ended in tragedy, when America's Space Agency put women at the forefront of one of its

missions for the first time.

It was an underwater experiment to study how scientists would cope

both physically and emotionally, working under pressure in a sealed environment.

The most ambitious project yet in ocean research has just started here in the sheltered bay of a beautiful West Indian island.

Two up, two down.

The latest thing in detached underwater living.

It contains everything to make a home for anyone who wants to live 50 feet

beneath the surface of the sea.

The Tech-Tite 2 mission, as it was to live 50 feet beneath the surface of the sea.

The Tech-Tite 2 mission, as it was called,

would allow NASA to study how scientists got on with their research

and how they got on with each other

while sealed in a very small space. This was something

they hoped to replicate with their Skylab space station in a mission planned for 1973.

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