21.

Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row out to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up.

Italo Calvino, ‘The Distance of the Moon’ from The Cosmicomics

Star City, 11 April 2014

Relative to the Earth’s surface, Soyuz and the Space Station travel at around 28,000 kilometres per hour. But when we’re talking about speed during the rendezvous phase, we mean relative speed, or the speed at which one is moving relative to the other. At the moment of docking it is very low: 7 or 8 centimetres per second. When two metal shells containing precious air touch each other in the vacuum of space, it’s best that they do so gently.

If everything goes to plan, the computer will make sure that the speed and all the other parameters are correct. The Soyuz, in fact, performs the approach and docking automatically thanks to the Kurs system, a set of antennae that conduct a silent dialogue with their counterparts on the ISS, exchanging information about speed, distance and relative attitude. In the event of a Kurs system or on-board computer failure, the astronauts must take manual control. But there’s a problem: the approach data are no longer available. If this happens when you are not yet in the immediate vicinity of the ISS but close enough to see it with the naked eye, the flight engineer is expected in certain conditions to move into the orbital module and use a laser rangefinder to measure the distance and velocity. The drill for today, however, concerns the final phase of the approach, when we are less than 400 metres from the Space Station. When you’re that close to the ISS, all crew must be in their proper places in the descent module and the hatch to the orbital module must be closed.

But how do we determine the distance if the Kurs system isn’t functioning? With the simplest aid possible: a grid attached to the viewer, superimposed over the image of the Space Station and linked to a table that correlates apparent dimensions and distance. If, for example, the diameter of the ISS Service Module is as large as a square on the grid, the table tells us that the distance is 200 metres; if the diameter of the docking hatch is two squares, the distance is only 70 metres, and so on. As for speed, the strategy is based on knowing the impulse given by the attitude thrusters, which are the ones fired during the final approach. An impulse of one second forward or aft means a 4-centimetre-per-second speed change. So if we find ourselves motionless relative to the Space Station and we want to approach at a speed of 40 centimetres per second, we have to provide a ten-second impulse forward.

It’s only three weeks till the exam, so today I’ve asked my instructor, Sasha, if I can practise a sequence of four scenarios similar to those I’ll have to deal with on the day. I take my seat in the middle and pull out the extendable track with the manual controls so I can reach the two knobs comfortably: the one on the right controls rotation on three axes, and the one on the left controls lateral translation, high-low and left-right. Next to the latter there’s a lever. If you press it, you accelerate forward, towards the docking probe; you pull it to accelerate backwards. As we’ll do on exam day, we start with the simplest profile, a change of docking port. The Russian segment of ISS has four possible ‘parking spots’, and although it’s rare, you sometimes need to move your own Soyuz to make room for another vehicle. The change of docking port is always carried out in manual mode; there is no automatic sequence for this procedure.

The simulation begins as soon as the hooks open and, pushed by large springs, the Soyuz starts to move away from SO-1, one of the small modules equipped for Russian extravehicular activities. Through the periscope, I watch as the docking port recedes and an increasingly larger portion of the nearby Service Module appears in my field of view. I wait until its diameter is reduced to four squares on the grid, a sign that it’s about 50 metres away, before I give a three-second forward impulse to stop us receding. Now I start moving towards the end of the Russian segment to turn us around: I’ve actually left from a nadir position, or towards Earth, and I have to move to the MIM-2 module, which is at the zenith of the Space Station. When I’m in front of my destination docking port, I align myself with the target with a rotation of 180° around the axis of the Soyuz. The target is a diamond with one corner cropped and a projecting central cross, which shows attitude and alignment errors. I initiate the approach, gradually reducing the speed so there will always be enough space to brake. When I’m only a few metres away, my reference for the distance is the target itself. I want to stop at around 2 metres. It’s a technique many astronauts use: stopping just before contact, and then giving a forward impulse for two or three seconds to acquire 8–12 centimetres per second: not too fast, not too slow, just the right closing speed to make contact safely. I’ve learned to take all the time I need and not feel tempted by the urge to complete the scenario. A few seconds of extra concentration can make all the difference. When I think I’m aligned, stable and still with regard to the docking port, I give a forward impulse for two seconds without further delay and continue to make the small corrections necessary to maintain proper alignment until contact. At this point the simulation stops. I relax my hands and wait for Sasha’s feedback on the alignment, speed, time taken and fuel consumed. Everything was perfect. If this had been the actual exam, I would have received full marks.

A change of docking port is kind of a warm-up; more complicated scenarios are on the way. Sasha loads the next simulation, and I have a few seconds to note the speed and distance before the alarm goes off and the data disappear. I’ve lost the main navigation and control computer, and with it all the Kurs data and a series of automatic compensations that make manual flight easier. This is the most difficult scenario. I turn off the alarm, activate the manual controls and quickly assess the position relative to the Space Station. Then I initiate the flyaround manoeuvre, a flight around the ISS to align with the docking port. We’re about 300 metres from the Space Station. When I began my training I found it difficult to orient myself at this distance – the ISS components looked like a white blur through the periscope – but with practice I’ve learned how to interpret the image quickly.

In a few months I’ll be seeing that whitish blur in orbit, and it won’t be a simulation any longer, but a real destination. In the emptiness of space, it will be a friendly and familiar place, where fellow human beings will give us a warm welcome.

—

Tomorrow is Cosmonautics Day. For more than fifty years, the Soviet Union, now Russia, has celebrated the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight on 12 April. It was the first daring orbit around the Earth, 108 minutes that ushered in the era of human spaceflight. Since 2001, the anniversary has also been celebrated in hundreds of other cities all over the world, with festivities called ‘Yuri’s Night’, and in 2011 the United Nations declared 12 April International Day of Human Space Flight. Probably no one in Star City noticed. Cosmonautics Day has always been a special date here, and training comes to a halt so that everyone can celebrate.

On that 12 April no halt was necessary, since the anniversary fell on a Saturday. I would be celebrating Yuri in Cottage 3 that evening, but first I spent a lazy morning at the Profilaktorium with my Soyuz procedure checklists. After every launch, and often while I was away from Star City, updated pages were distributed; as always, Yuri Petrovich had left them on the desk in my room. So I made a big cup of tea and mentally prepared for a couple of hours of painstaking work, replacing the old pages with the updates, one by one. A few solitary flakes of snow drifted past my window, the last gasp of a winter that had seen temperatures of 30° C below zero. The first flowers around the lake announced that, at last, winter was giving way to spring.

I spent the rest of the day talking to my friend Michela via email. We’d known each other since school, and now she lived in Vienna. I had turned to her for help since, as a PhD in English, she was well versed in literature, and I had embarked on a special endeavour: I’d been hoping to gather a selection of verse and prose extracts from various time periods and languages which would act as a sort of literary companion for my mission into space. I wanted to touch on themes of research and exploration, beauty and mystery, and our sense of awe in the face of them. The intent was to print this collection on minibooks, the kind that you can hide in your hand, barely 2 or 3 centimetres in size. I would be able to take a few hundred of these small, light booklets on the Soyuz as a part of my personal allocation of 1.5 kg, and when I returned to Earth they would make a lovely gift for family and friends, I hoped. I’d come up with the idea a few months earlier and I was still excited about it, but the Parisian publisher who’d offered to print these little books said that time was running out. That’s how ideas and verses from Goethe to Emily Dickinson, quotes from the Divine Comedy and particularly lyrical phrases from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry started flying between Moscow and Vienna, as two friends exchanged ideas on Cosmonautics Day.

When it comes down to it, my first voyages were in books. I doubt whether I’d be an astronaut today if I hadn’t climbed a ladder to the Moon many years ago, if I hadn’t voyaged to the centre of the Earth, if I hadn’t travelled all the way to China with Marco Polo or fought epic battles beside Sandokan. I lost myself in books, and found myself the same way. I’ve occasionally come across bad books, and I’ve learned to avoid them the same way you learn not to drink spoiled milk. I’ve also discovered wonderful books that have made me feel part of a shared human experience, made me feel small because I’m only an individual faced with the richness and intensity of many other lives, both real and imagined, but also large because I could identify with each of them through their stories. Books gave me words and imagination. I read them in secret, behind my desk at school and under the covers at bedtime, with a sense of daring and complicity. These were moments of solitude, but never of loneliness.