The seatbelt light is off. For once, maybe the first time for several years, I don’t take out my computer to work. I don’t look out the window either – it’s dark already. Nor do I start trying to talk to my neighbour: sooner or later she would ask me why I am going to Moscow, and I’d have to make something up, as always. I rarely tell the truth. As soon as the word ‘astronaut’ comes out of my mouth, the shockwave wipes out all possibility of having a normal, equal conversation between two human beings who enjoy learning from each other. So I just sit here looking into the emptiness and catching my breath. I’ve spent weeks whirling around, navigating the rapids without a break. At last the riverbed is wider, and the water is flowing peacefully. I can let myself go and do nothing.
September was frenetic in Houston. All the instructors request the crew for a final review as close to the launch as possible; missing it would spell disaster, you understand. There’s a final virtual flight with the SAFER, a final Prep and Post, a final emergency simulation, a final chance to rescue a crewmate after a cardio-pulmonary arrest or to save the Space Station after a critical electric bus loss, and so forth.
The principal investigators of the human physiology experiments also want the final pre-flight data as close to the launch as possible, which is how I found myself one day with more cooler bags and cases full of gear for experiments than I could manage to carry. If nothing else, some of the exams offered the chance to catch a half-hour nap. The countless MRIs are a case in point: to the great delight of the operators, who appreciate a still subject, I always fell asleep in a few minutes, despite the machine’s thundering throughout the scan. There was no shortage, either, of final check-ups that were strict medical requirements for the Space Station crew. I had to undergo a bone-density scan again, for example, to get a pre-flight baseline; it will enable us to quantify the bone loss caused by six months in weightlessness. Similarly, an isokinetic test provided the baseline data for muscle strength and resistance; and to evaluate my balance, I took a vestibular assessment on a special moving platform.
During all of this pre-flight bustle, Alicia had to clear an entire day on my schedule so I could repeat a session in the vacuum chamber with the EMU suit. Paradoxically, while you’re in Russia, this event is scheduled at the beginning of the EVA course and it’s actually a prerequisite to begin training in the hydrolaboratory. In Houston, you get your vacuum chamber run at the peak of your training, as if to put the final seal on your preparation for space. When I first tried it, last July, the chamber had a technical problem. Everything went well until the pre-breathe started: a good four hours of waiting and breathing pure oxygen, since in the vacuum chamber you’re not allowed to carry out the small movements to speed up the metabolism which are part of the shorter ISLE procedure. In an attempt to distract astronauts from their physical discomfort and help pass the time, they usually show a film on a screen conveniently positioned over a porthole. I chose The Princess Bride, an American cult comedy I absolutely had to see, they assured me. The film had only just got going when I became aware that my suit was getting warmer and warmer. This was strange, because I’d completed all the operations that required physical effort and I hadn’t been moving at all for several minutes: I expected to need less cooling, not more. However, I rotated the knob to a lower temperature and, somewhat puzzled, I glanced through the pages on the LCD display until I found the temperatures in the cooling loop. They went down for a few minutes, and then started to creep back up. At that point, I reported the problem via radio, and the exercise was rapidly interrupted. There was a leak in the cooling system.
So I had to repeat the drill a couple of weeks ago. This time, I had to watch a reflection of The Princess Bride, since we were in a back-up chamber, and the porthole was behind me. But I was still able to clearly observe a playful physics demonstration that always takes place during this exercise. Some water is left out in an open container and, once the pressure has sufficiently decreased, it boils at room temperature. Due to restrictions in the back-up chamber, I had to forgo the usual second demonstration, in which two objects of widely differing weights and shapes are dropped simultaneously to prove that, in the absence of air, they’ll reach the floor together. I’ll have to go to the Moon one day in order to confirm this. Oh well!
For now, I’m going to Star City. In many ways, this trip is just like all the others. I’ve packed my bags at the last minute as usual, zipping up the suitcase while my taxi waited outside. I’ve taken the usual train to Frankfurt airport – by now I’m resigned to the habitual delays. I’ve boarded the usual flight, grabbing a Russian magazine at the end of the jetway to prove to myself that I can still read it – that my Russian hasn’t shrunk to astronaut jargon. It’s all going as usual, and yet this is no ordinary trip. The voyage towards space has begun, and I won’t be going home again. My plane ticket is only one-way, and in my passport there’s a visa for Kazakhstan. Actually, I won’t need one to go to Baikonur, because the city has a unique legal status, but it would be helpful if, say, there were to be an emergency after the launch, and we were forced to land immediately on Kazakh soil. Strictly speaking, without a visa we’d be in the country illegally. I can see it now: us getting out of our little spaceship, somewhat battered and shaken from the hairy landing – and the first thing they ask for is our passports. After all, if we demand them of war refugees, what is an emergency re-entry from space?
Recently there have been more and more occasions when I’ve said to myself, ‘This is the last time.’ The last time in such-and-such a place or with such-and-such a person, or doing a certain thing. Of course, it’s not the last time ever, at least I hope not. Just the last time before I go into space. As it happens, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about life after my mission. It’s still hidden behind a thick curtain of fog.
Yesterday I went to EAC for the last time to say goodbye to my colleagues at a traditional get-together. Over the weekend I had been to Italy for the last time, just a few days in Rome and Milan, my schedule packed with outreach events, some of them pleasurable, some less so. I had to carve out a few hours for small Earth pleasures: a last pizza with a friend in Trastevere, a last Sunday walk in Sempione Park. Before that, I had said farewell to my life in Houston – maybe for ever in this case. Who knows? I may not have the good fortune to be assigned to a second ISS mission. But I feel optimistic, and I want to believe that it was only a goodbye. I was really touched by my dear friends Mary and Stacey, who threw a farewell party for me, inviting my friends and my brother’s family who were in the city for the weekend. Mary and Stacey are both doctors, and for years their house has been a gathering spot for a small, close-knit group of female astronauts. They gave themselves the name Tank Girls, after the title of an awful post-apocalyptic comedy which in Cady’s words is ‘so bad it’s good’. It’s said to be a favourite of Pam’s, who was first pilot and later commander of the Space Shuttle. Over the years, I always cherished the evenings at Mary and Stacey’s house as safe havens of warmth and friendship. It was also humbling. Mary sometimes didn’t get back in time for supper if she was working late in the operating theatre: a surgeon in one of Houston’s prestigious paediatric hospitals, she saves the lives of newborn babies and children for a living. She would come home with her scrubs on and tell me in all seriousness what an exceptional job I had. Maybe …
Mission order, formally approved by my manager like a regular business trip
As the plane lands in Moscow, applause breaks out, a liberating gesture I’ve only seen Russians and Italians make before. Twin peoples – I have always known that. Before I get off the plane I check and recheck to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I have a very precious piece of hand luggage with me and I certainly don’t want to lose it on the way to Moscow, considering that I’m supposed to take care of it for the entire trip to space, there and back. Inside are jewellery and photographs, but also patches, stones, small toys and children’s drawings. These objects of great sentimental value have been entrusted to me by family and friends, and I’m allowed to take them with me on the Soyuz as long as all of them weigh less than 1.5 kg. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, they’ll all come back to Earth with us. I also have about 150 copies of the minibook containing my selection of texts. I’ve called it Untravelled World, and on the cover is a lovely drawing by my pen-pal, Giorgia, who works in data visualization. ‘Pen-pal’ in an era of piecemeal communication: we’ve never exchanged letters, only private Twitter messages. I have thousands of copies of my booklet, since it wasn’t possible to print fewer, but 500 of them are numbered. It was Kjell’s three young children who took care of stamping the numbers in them a few weeks ago, or so he assured me. I suspect that he helped himself, to relieve me of the worry. Good old Kjell. The 350 numbered booklets I don’t have with me were left in Houston, and if all goes to plan they’ll be included in my Crew Care Packages, the psychological support kits that get put together by the families and sent aboard. With a bit of luck, it will be possible to send them back down on a Dragon.
In my hand baggage I’m also carrying the accessories I’ll have with me on the Soyuz. They gave them to me in Houston, an envelope full of items I’d chosen from a list a few months ago: a kneeboard with ten sheets of white paper, pen and pencil, two lanyards to secure them with, a torch, two bulldog clips, a pack of small Velcro squares, a cheap stopwatch and some rather expensive (so they tell me) sickbags. I asked for four of them, somewhat guiltily. Our journey to the ISS is expected to be a fast one, six hours from launch to docking. But it was the same schedule for the crew who left in March, and they had to transition to the old two-day rendezvous profile after a computer bug disrupted an engine burn. The Soyuz carrying Sasha, Yelena and Butch in September was also a bit capricious: after orbital injection, only one solar panel extended, and the second one was deployed only after docking. So it’s better to be prepared. Four sickbags.
—
The next five weeks in Star City were in most ways a repeat of those I’d spent in the spring as back-up crew: the final training sessions, Sundays spent studying, the visit to TsUP, some half dozen exams, the rituals prior to departing for Baikonur. Ironically, now that things were becoming serious, I wasn’t experiencing those moments with the same intensity as before. I just didn’t feel the same childlike enthusiasm of the first time, or even the pre-exam nerves. The easy-going camaraderie with Reid and Alex was missing. It was all a bit dulled by repetition, and even the colours soon faded. The golden autumn was over, and the first snows had arrived in mid-October. By this point I felt caught up in the final countdown.
However, life still had a surprise in store for me before I took off for space. On 28 October, while I was sleeping peacefully after an evening going over Soyuz procedures with Kimiya, the uber-prepared back-up-crew flight engineer, an Antares rocket exploded on the other side of the world a few seconds after lift-off. Fortunately, there were no victims. On board was a cargo vehicle, Cygnus, with more than two tonnes of provisions for the Space Station – all lost. I heard about it the next morning, when I saw all the emails in my inbox from NASA, ESA and ASI with the first bits of news. It had happened only a few hours before, but everyone had promptly gone to work to evaluate the impact and begin sketching a plan for replacing what had been destroyed.
Initially, I absorbed the news without making much of it and even somewhat distractedly, because our final exams on the Russian segment of the ISS and on Soyuz were scheduled for the next two days. I was determined to stay focused on this last duty, and ignore the issue with the Cygnus. In point of fact, the actual event seemed unsurprising. The American commercial cargo vehicles were NASA’s attempt to encourage the development of the national space industry, and this approach carried with it the conscious acceptance of some risk. I trusted that the supply chain of the Space Station had been managed in such a way as to absorb the cargo loss with limited consequences. Only later did I learn that one of those consequences, however irrelevant to life on the Space Station overall, would mean a great disappointment for me.
The exam on the Russian segment was an easy task for me and Terry, as it was the first time. The memorable part of the day occurred before we began, during the usual pre-exam interviews. We still talk about it, and it never fails to make us crack up. Here is what happened: a journalist asked me in all apparent seriousness how it felt to be going into space with two such attractive men, whose strong shoulders I could lean on. From that moment on, Terry had only to glance suggestively at one of his shoulders to get us all laughing.
The next day we showed up again to face the committee for the final Soyuz exams. After three and a half years of training, the last – the actual last – day had finally arrived. After the usual grouchy but good-natured quips from Valery Korzun, oscillating, as always, between scolding and encouragement, Anton chose one of the envelopes with the exam scenarios. Kjell, Kimiya and Oleg, our back-up crew, had drawn the envelope with the fire the day before, so we knew for sure that this time we weren’t about to burn up. And in fact, Anton chose a really lucky envelope: there were five failures, as always, but all of them were easily managed. So we finished the exam session with little effort, but with top marks.
The festivities were memorable. They began as usual with refreshments in a nearby meeting room, where Terry, Anton and I took our places, along with the back-up crew, at the head of a long table made of desks pushed together. It was covered with plastic plates piled high with fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers and cold cuts. There was water, fruit juice, and lots and lots of vodka. After a few hours and countless toasts, we moved on to Cottage 3, where the festivities went on into the night on a variety of themes: celebrating our exams, typical Friday-night cheer and Halloween for NASA staff and their families. On the stairs there was a pumpkin carved with the numbers 42 and 43 – the work of Sasha, our manual-docking instructor. We were as happy as kids running around an amusement park.
That weekend, my mind free – though perhaps not entirely lucid! – I began reading emails about the exploded Cygnus which had accumulated over the past few days. The immediate impact was felt on the Space Station’s current activities, which would need to be replanned. I imagined dozens of schedulers working feverishly to reshuffle the timeline of the next weeks, taking interdependence, conflicts, readiness of the procedures, the availability of ground support and much more into consideration.
It was less urgent but just as important to evaluate how and when to replace the items that had been destroyed: experiment hardware, spare parts, EVA equipment. Luckily none of us had lost anything truly personal. My crew-preference bag, which I had filled mostly with tracksuits and soft, warm fleeces, was already on the ISS: Alex even sent a photo to reassure me. After some uncertainty about three of the containers, I was also told that all my bonus food was on board too, and half my clothes. The other half had burned up in the Cygnus, but there was still time to replace them. The next launches would be our Soyuz, with its small cargo volume, and the Dragon of the SpaceX-5 mission, the latter being the first real opportunity for any important resupply. It was planned for December, and there were enough provisions on board to last until then, with one notable exception: tissues. I was confident we could live with that.
There was another email chain about my personal EVA kit. In addition to gloves, every astronaut has a green net bag sent up, full of personal items such as underwear, padded glove inserts, moleskin patches, and most importantly, the LCVG cooling garment. My bag had been on the Cygnus. This was not good news, particularly just when a third EVA during our expedition was being mooted, and I had got my hopes up. But I wasn’t all that worried. I’d got used to the idea that in order to guarantee the necessary redundancy, it was essential that all three of us should be able to perform an EVA, and that was one of the reasons why I had applied myself so vigorously to the training. If I were not ready to perform a spacewalk, it would need only a health concern regarding Terry or Butch for us to lose EVA capability with the EMU suit. Moreover, the emails arriving from Houston – some of them official, others informal – all sent the same message: the team were already working on a replacement plan. A few days later, more detailed, yet still reassuring news arrived: they’d taken my gloves off the Soyuz because they had to free up space for more urgent things, but they’d send them up in December on Dragon, along with the replacement for my LCVG. There didn’t seem to be any hitches, and I was convinced – perhaps a bit naively – that everything was taken care of.
After our final exams, there were two days of holiday in Russia in celebration of national unity. Added to the weekend, this meant that we had a good ten days free before our departure for Baikonur. Anton invited me to spend a couple of days with him, Oleg and their respective families in a sanatorium, a large, half-empty hotel, something between a clinic and a health spa, and built in the rather drab Soviet style. Cosmonauts love to go there for a break. We stopped on the way to visit the fabulous monastery of Sergiyev Posad, where our guide was Father Ioav. He lives in the monastery but sees to the little church and the faithful from Star City. In his black robes and with his long beard, he was one of those religious people so brimming with love and gentleness that you want to share their faith, even if only to make them happy. I’d often seen him at the Profilaktorium, and he loved telling me about his trips to the Italian city of Bari. He’d been there more than once on pilgrimage to the Basilica of S. Nicola, a place of worship for both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers. He offers each crew the chance to pray with him in the monastery before a launch.
And I think everyone accepts, whether they believe or not.
