13.

Moscow, 19 October 2012

The procedures are written out on large sheets of cardboard, bound by a ring and tied with string to the frame supporting the pneumatic interface and the EVA control panel, which is peppered with command buttons and lights. A large blue knob in the centre of the pneumatic interface opens and closes oxygen lines to the suit and is used for choosing different pressure settings, depending on the various work phases. In orbit there are two identical interfaces, one in each of the small modules that serve as airlocks for Russian spacewalks.

It’s Alex who reads out the procedures now, while I activate buttons and valves as necessary, and according to his instructions. First of all, we perform a leak check, opening the oxygen lines to pressurize the suit. We watch the pressure gauge carefully for around one minute. There is some slight movement, but the drop in pressure is within acceptable limits. I’ve performed this check in Star City several times over the course of the past few weeks, but today I pay particular attention. After all, on those earlier occasions, no one intended or had the means to remove the air around us. Today, though, here at the premises of the space-suit manufacturer Zvezda, that is precisely the plan: Alex and I are in a big vacuum chamber.

In some ways, today’s drill is not very different from previous simulations. We arrived in a van this morning from Star City, after the usual traffic ordeal, and were taken to a little changing room where we put on our bright-blue cooling undergarment. It’s like NASA’s LCVG, a unitard with the cooling water tubes woven in the fabric, but it comes with a hood and seems less fragile. In this get-up, which would seem bizarre in most places, but certainly isn’t here in Zvezda, we were taken down long, gloomy corridors with brown laminate walls and printed linoleum flooring, until we finally emerged into a large hall with high ceilings, dominated by a sort of metal whale with its mouth open: the vacuum chamber. It’s a large white cylinder about 4 metres in diameter and 7 or 8 metres long. When we arrived, it was closed at the far end and open at the near end, like a jar with the lid off. The latter was hanging from a crane a few metres away.

In the belly of the whale, which is covered in grey metal plating, our suits were waiting, hanging from a suspension system. Like the one in Star City, this system allows us to move our 150 kg of weight fairly easily. After a quick safety briefing and the reassurance that it’s possible to repressurize the chamber rapidly in case of emergency, we turned on the power and, as our Russian colleagues love to say, we entered the suits. Indeed, you don’t ‘put on’ the Orlan, you get inside it: it’s a single piece, apart from the gloves. Just like on the EMU, the life support systems are in a sort of backpack, but on the Orlan the backpack is hinged and can open like a door. You put your legs in the suit while sitting at the door, and you connect the cooling water hoses and the cables for audio communication and medical telemetry. You can then turn on the fan and the water pump before you finally slide inside, letting your feet find the boots and stretching out your arms until your hands fit inside the gloves. These are quick and simple operations, especially when compared with the complex EMU-donning procedures.

When they were sure we’d got into our suits correctly, the specialists left, and I imagined the large lid behind us beginning to creep up, slowly, slowly, to seal the enormous jar. What we’re doing today is a kind of final trial. We’ve passed a very detailed theoretical exam on the Orlan systems and now we have to demonstrate that we know how to carry out all the operations pre- and post-EVA. When this phase is complete – and only then – we can start training with the suit underwater – a very different approach to that used in Houston, where everything happens in parallel.

After the leak check, we re-equalize the pressure with the outside, letting the Orlan deflate. Later, when the pressure around us decreases to almost zero, the suit’s regulator will intervene to maintain an internal pressure of 0.4 bars, or 40 per cent of the atmospheric pressure at sea level. If we were to breathe normal air in those conditions, the partial pressure of oxygen, which is only 21 per cent of the mixture, would be too low to keep us alive. So today it’s mandatory to replace all the air with oxygen, just as we would before a genuine EVA in orbit. We open the oxygen lines in purge mode and wait for the air to be forced out of the suit.

Dropping down to 0.4 bars of pressure can bring on another problem, which scuba-divers know well: the risk of the bends, or decompression sickness. In our body’s tissues there’s always a certain amount of nitrogen, an inert gas that makes up 78 per cent of the air we breathe. If the surrounding pressure increases, as it does during diving, more nitrogen diffuses into your blood and tissues. This extra nitrogen is released both during and after the ascent, in much the same way that carbon dioxide bubbles up in a sparkling drink when it’s opened. To ensure that the gas bubbles released are not too big, and therefore dangerous, divers make decompression stops during ascent: the longer and deeper the dive, the more stops they make. This allows the nitrogen to diffuse gradually from the tissues into the blood, where it is carried to the lungs safely. Going out in the Orlan suit at 0.4 bars is similar to an ascent, since the surrounding pressure decreases. The solution in this case is not a series of decompression stops, but a preventative desaturation: during what we call pre-breathe, we breathe pure oxygen for half an hour, and this induces a gradual diffusion of nitrogen out of our bodies. It’s another step in the procedure which is usually only simulated, but today we actually carry it out. After thirty minutes, we’re ready: we open the relief valve – which in orbit would let air escape to space – and the technicians seated outside turn on the chamber’s vacuum pump.

When the pressure in the chamber drops below 0.4 bars, I can hear the usual creaking of the suit as it inflates. The space around my body expands, and the soft membranes against my legs and arms become stiff walls. These sensations are familiar, but I’m well aware that the pressure outside the suit is actually decreasing this time, as it would if I were on the Space Station and the air were seeping out into space. Eventually, the background noise from outside, which I hadn’t even noticed, grows muffled before it completely disappears. We are acoustically isolated, apart from the technicians’ voices coming through the audio system.

I try whistling. I round my lips and give it my all, but I manage only to let out a hiss and the occasional wheeze. Through the headphones I can hear Alex trying to do the same – and failing. Whistling is easy – but not when the atmosphere in the Orlan suit is less than half the pressure at sea level, too rarefied for your lips to produce the sound. Even our voices have changed, and our hoarseness is accompanied by a strange sensation in our airways: not unpleasant or alarming, just unusual.

I’m pleased with the muffled sounds, happy with the change in my voice and my inability to whistle. I’m happy about all these little signs because they remind me how unique this experience is. We are all surrounded by vacuum at all times, beyond the thin atmospheric layer that contains all life on Earth. But probably no other human being in the world is surrounded by vacuum at this exact moment in the same way we are. Our training as astronauts must transform the exceptional into the ordinary, rendering familiar experiences that are anything but. Every so often, though, it’s good to take a moment to savour the extraordinary.

—

Russian EVAs in the Orlan suit are usually reserved for cosmonauts, in the same way that only Americans, Europeans, Canadians and Japanese are trained to use the EMU. Alex and I owed our unusual opportunity to a Russian module called MLM, or Multifunctional Laboratory Module. ERA, or European Robotic Arm, which was developed and built by ESA, was scheduled to launch with the MLM. Per the agreements, once the MLM was launched, a European astronaut would participate in an EVA during the final installation of ERA. This was planned during Alex’s stay on board, and he was therefore the designated astronaut. Since one never plans anything in space without considering potential delays, I would be trained as a back-up for this EVA. In truth, the MLM had had a rather troubled history, to the extent that its launch had been put back by several years. There was therefore every possibility that this fateful EVA would be postponed from Alex’s expedition to mine. The potential for it to slip beyond that, however, was equally high.

Still, both of us were really pleased to have this opportunity. No matter what happened with the launch of MLM, if we were offered the chance to broaden our skillset as astronauts with such unique training, we certainly wouldn’t complain – far from it. And for my part, I was glad for the extra hours underwater with a pressurized suit, even if the Orlan was very different from the EMU. For an astronaut, hours in the water are like flight hours for a pilot or, I can imagine, hours at the piano for a pianist, time on the slopes for a skier. There are certain things you learn only by brute repetition and practice.

It was a nice time to be in Star City, because a really fun and close-knit group of astronauts was training there. Besides the usual busy social life in Cottage 3, we often found a way to do things together at the weekend. One Sunday afternoon, for example, we went go-karting in Moscow, proving beyond reasonable doubt that no matter how well we controlled it most of the time, our competitive spirit was alive and well.

About that time, NASA astronaut Kevin Ford was preparing to leave for space and on one of his last evenings in Star City there was a video conference with the Space Station, which offered a chance for a final exchange with the on-board crew before his launch. After the official bit, Suni, then commander of the ISS, asked Kevin to invite all of us in to say hello. With their image projected on the large screen, it was almost as if the ISS crew were raising a glass with us at Shep’s Bar. But we were the ones with the glasses – they were sucking from bags of soluble orange juice.

A few days later, we gathered again in Shep’s Bar for another video conference, this time with Houston. We were eager to hear an important announcement: the name of the person who would be carrying out, a little more than two years later, a unique mission lasting a whole year, double the usual duration. Terry and I were particularly interested since we’d be welcoming this NASA astronaut aboard a few months into our mission. We discovered that it was Scott, whom I’d met on various occasions by then, always appreciating his frank, friendly and generous ways. I was sure he’d make a great crewmate. We still didn’t know anything about our Soyuz commander, other than that it wouldn’t be Sergei Zaletin, contrary to what they’d announced some months earlier.

While I was waiting to learn who our commander would be so I could train with him on the Soyuz, I dodged the Russian winter by heading for the mild Houston temperatures. The trip template meteorology was in my favour this year. It was a fairly brief trip, but the programme was extremely intense: along with some lighter courses, I was scheduled for three NBL runs over a span of just twelve days. I’d have to prepare for each of them more meticulously than usual, if possible, since this was about filling in training gaps that had shown up during the summer, after which I’d repeat the exam. Up to now, I’d had different instructors for every run, but now I was officially handed over to the team assigned to my crew. Faruq, who was responsible for underwater training, and Alex, who dealt with our EVA preparation overall, including suits and the Airlock, would accompany Terry and me for the coming two years. Being coached continuously by the same people proved extremely useful, and the extra runs greatly improved my awareness in the suit as well as my confidence. This time the exam went well, and the very next day I went back to Europe.

On 30 November, I got a message from Terry in Houston saying simply: ‘Two years from today!’