NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) researches asteroids:
But the project's future is in danger:
When we visited the sea lab in early July, staff were getting ready for a visit from James Cameron and Sylvia Earle, in the hopes of drumming up more political support amidst a flagging budget. But in late July, the bad news surfaced: NOAA announced budget cuts that are likely to imperil it for good. "There were signals that the budget was tight but we didn’t think it would be zeroed out," Thomas Potts, director of Aquarius, told ABC News in July, when the $5 million budget was killed. The lab, which is used extensively during the year for a wide spectrum of non-space-related oceanic research, is no longer mission-ready.
The Dish 