37.
But nothing the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem that appeared among them. Perhaps they will yet rediscover the epic genius, when they learn that there is no refuge from fate, learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate. How soon this will happen is another question.
Simone Weil, The Iliad or The Poem of Force
International Space Station, 17 April 2015
‘Dragon has started its approach from 30 metres. Monitor according to step 5 of procedure 1.102.’
Our astronaut colleague David, with his slight Quebec accent, confirms from Houston what Terry and I have already seen from the robotic workstation in the Cupola: Dragon is starting its final approach. Within about twenty minutes it will arrive at the capture point, 10 metres from the Space Station and only 5 metres from the free end effector of the SSRMS arm, which waits, still folded, like a half-closed compass. Soon, it will extend under my commands to reach for its prey: a tame beast, or so I hope.
Before holding at 30 metres, Dragon stopped at 250, and before that, at 350. During this slow process, we must simply confirm that it remains inside the approach corridor and that the correct lights are illuminated on the remote control panel. We diligently report our observations to Houston, as we learned to do in training in a simulated Cupola, inside a large room at JSC that was kept dark, with an image of Dragon projected on a black background that looked like space. In truth, I suspect that if there were some anomaly, they’d become aware of it much earlier in Houston, or in Hawthorne, California, at the SpaceX control centre. But Terry continues to make regular reports in his role as M2, the support function I carried out for Butch during last January’s capture.
Dragon is so stable that it seems completely still; you barely notice the short burns of the attitude thrusters. Little by little, as it approaches, it’s easier to make out the details: the grapple pin, the strobe light, the thrusters’ exhaust nozzles. This precision encounter between two vessels on a boundless sea never fails to move me. No matter how big the Space Station may be, humanity’s outpost in space is nothing but a grain of metal in the vastness of low Earth orbit, and yet Dragon has found us, and is about to start flying in formation with us. Even though it’s all planned down to the last detail, this vehicle joining us from Earth with its slow, steady pace, this messenger and bearer of gifts radiates a poetic, even epic aura. We watched its departure live on NASA TV three days ago, and now we’re welcoming it at the other end of its voyage. We are the first humans to set eyes on it since it disappeared on top of the Falcon 9 rocket.
I’m trying not to get too absorbed in my thoughts, or seduced by the sight of Dragon. I’ll need to stay focused. I’m acutely aware that being in command of the SSRMS today is a chance to become famous – extremely famous – for all the wrong reasons. A slip at the controls at a critical moment is all it would take to induce an uncontrolled oscillation; and pausing just a moment too long before moving the arm away to let the oscillation dampen out could damage the grapple fixture. There isn’t another one, so the entire mission, with its two tonnes of cargo, would be lost. This sort of situation must be what our first boss had in mind, a veteran astronaut who never tired of reminding us Shenanigans when we were new recruits: ‘Don’t become famous!’ So today, all I want is for the capture to remain an anonymous event, not worthy of even a footnote in the history of the Space Station.
I can’t say I’m worried, in any event. I’ve performed hundreds of captures at the simulator, and dozens just in the past few weeks, on board, thanks to the Robot software, which is installed on one of the computers in the Lab. Every time I went by, if I had the time, I’d stop for a few minutes to perform a capture, and then I’d load a new scenario while I floated away towards my duties.
Dragon has concluded its approach, and it’s now flying in formation with us. Terry and I are ready for capture, but David lets us know that we still need to wait five or six minutes before proceeding, and I imagine one last round of Go-No Go between the specialists in Houston and Hawthorne. While we await authorization for capture, we enter orbital night. Dragon now stands out against the darkness, illuminated by the external lights of the Space Station. The internal lighting of the Cupola is turned off to prevent reflections, and our faces are lit only by the spectral glow of our computer screens.
‘You are Go for capture sequence,’ David informs us. It’s time. With Terry’s help – he reads the procedure, though we both know it by heart – I configure the arm in manual mode and set the end effector for capture. On Dragon’s remote control panel, Terry arms the command ‘free drift’. He’ll send it when I’ve brought the robotic arm to within a couple of metres, and from that moment we’ll be working against the clock, because Dragon is no longer actively controlled and might slip out of the capture envelope.
I make some small, on-the-spot rotational adjustments with the right-hand controller, so as to start with optimal alignment, and then I push the left-hand controller forward, initiating the approach. Terry calls out the distances. He’s judging them by sight, based on the orthogonal images from the video cameras. He is responsible for monitoring the whole of the robotic arm, because my eyes are glued to the central display. The image comes from the video camera installed on the end effector of the SSRMS, and on it I can see the target, which guides me towards the grapple pin, along with a series of superimposed alignment cues. I have to make only minimal corrections; Dragon is very stable.
‘Two and a half metres,’ Terry says when we’re about halfway through.
‘Ready for free drift,’ I respond. ‘Copy: I’m sending the free-drift command.’
When lights on the remote control panel confirm reception by the vehicle, Terry announces, ‘Dragon is in free drift.’ I’m therefore authorized to continue, with no need to slow down. I’m glad the timing has worked out: it’s better to maintain a constant speed of approach, since every time you push on the controls there’s a risk of oscillation in the arm. It’s all perfectly aligned.
‘One pin,’ Terry says, referring to the remaining distance.
‘I’m Go for capture,’ I tell him, responding to his implied question. We’re nearly there. The visual references tell me that we’re in the envelope, but I force myself to wait a few seconds. Three, two, one … ‘Capture!’ I exclaim, pressing the trigger under my right index finger, and immediately releasing the controls.
At this point, the robotic arm is completing the capture sequence automatically. Terry and I watch the telemetry closely and keep the malfunction procedures handy, just in case. ‘Good tension,’ I say at last, reading a value that confirms that the capture device on the robotic arm has a solid grip on Dragon. We won’t become famous, at least not today.
‘Dragon capture complete. You are Go for post-capture reconfiguration,’ Terry reports to Houston while I switch the robotic arm to safe mode. Houston will take control of it later for berthing. After high-fiving with Terry, I grab the microphone to congratulate the ground team for a vehicle and a mission that have been impeccable so far. Then I tell Terry that I need his help for a special photo op and I ask him to wait a few minutes, while I go and change. On board Dragon there’s a special, long-awaited delivery, and I have just the right outfit for the occasion.
When I decided to bring a uniform from Star Trek: Voyager with me on the Space Station, I was hoping that there would be some way to celebrate the TV series’ twentieth anniversary in space. In 1995, I was in the United States as an exchange student, and as a Trekkie since childhood – in a pre-internet era and in a country more or less uninterested in the series, where its episodes arrived late or never – I was delighted by the possibility of watching the saga’s new incarnation from its very beginning on TV. As an ambitious seventeen-year-old with an interest in science, I certainly noticed the fact that both the Voyager command bridge and its machine room were led by women, a scientist-captain and her rebellious and brilliant chief engineer. In honour of Captain Janeway’s passion for coffee, I followed a Trekkie friend’s suggestion and got Terry to take a photo of me in my Voyager uniform against a background showing Dragon in the firm grip of the robotic arm; and in its belly, the very first space espresso machine.
I can’t say to what extent my passion for Star Trek really influenced my choices, and it may seem excessive, even childish to claim that a TV series made a significant difference to my life, but sometimes a reaction needs a catalyst, and in my case, the adventures of Mr Spock and Captain Kirk may well have acted as the catalyst for my dreams of going into space. A dream is concentrated imagination, with the power to feed your daily motivation, but also your stubborn determination to pursue unlikely, long-term objectives. Like all that is human, it has its risks. Pride can lead those who achieve their dreams to delude themselves into thinking that success was just the result of their actions, forgetting the lucky breaks and all the chance involved in life – and that life is often less favourable to people who are every bit as deserving. Someone looking in from the outside might be convinced that the lucky person had special talents and a blueprint for success; just look at the countless books and interviews in which people considered successful are asked for their advice. But what about all those of equal talent, and who’ve worked just as hard without the same success or rewards? They remain invisible. I don’t have to look far to spot fate’s arbitrary nature. The 2008 astronaut selection would almost certainly have been held three years earlier if not for the Space Shuttle Columbia’s fatal accident, which delayed the launch of the European Columbus module. Three years earlier, and I wouldn’t even have been able to participate.
I feel it would be a good thing for us to start recognizing again the role fortune plays in human events; to regard the successful with tempered admiration; and with equal admiration those who pursue their dreams with dignity and effort. Even when circumstances aren’t favourable, their effort is noteworthy and bears fruit. People who are motivated to give their best every day and to choose the road less travelled in the knowledge that it offers greater opportunities for growth are more likely to enjoy a fulfilling life, even if the dream that spurred them on is never realized. I wish every child in the world could grow up without knowing danger, violence, trauma or poverty. And then, I wish that all of them could have a dream to cherish.
Towards mid-afternoon, once Dragon has docked and the bolts securing it to the Space Station are in place, Houston gives me the green light to leak check the vestibule, the sealed volume now existing between the hatch of the Station and that of Dragon. When I’ve confirmed that there aren’t any leaks, I go on to equalize the pressure and open the hatch Station-side. As soon as I get the final barrier between us and Dragon sliding on its tracks, I’m struck by a pungent, unmistakable odour, coming from the material that’s been exposed to open space. The odour is not at all pleasing – a slight staleness, with undertones of something burned, like the smell you get after welding. Somewhat inappropriately, we call it ‘the smell of space’.
I’ll spend a couple of hours today reconfiguring the vestibule and cautiously, meticulously removing a number of electronic units for controlling the berthing mechanism. We’ll open Dragon’s hatch tomorrow morning and immediately retrieve the urgent cargo. Top of the list for me is a small Kubik incubator I’ve got to install in Columbus so I can begin the Cytospace and NATO experiments. Cytospace looks at the effects of weightlessness on the cytoskeleton, the structure that gives form and mechanical support to the cells. NATO will test the hypothesis that adding certain types of nanoparticles to bone tissue can effectively counteract osteoporosis. The cell cultures will stay in the incubator for a few days before I put them in one of the freezers. After a month, Scott will take care of transferring them to a cooler bag for re-entry on Earth. Terry and I will have been gone for several days by then.
I can hardly believe it, but there are only four weeks to go before our re-entry. I have the disturbing feeling that time is running out whenever an activity connected to our return is put on the timeline, as it is more and more often, whether it’s preparing our personal data for download or checking that the seats in our Soyuz haven’t become too small for us due to the lengthening of our spines. I’m not looking forward to returning. On the contrary. Of course I’ll be happy to hug the people I love, to eat a big fresh salad with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella, to take a real shower, and feel the water running through my hair … But I’d be willing to delay my return and all these pleasures for a little bit more time in space. I like being up here. The excitement of the first few weeks has settled into a quiet fondness. I feel comfortable with my routines on board and fulfilled by my activities up here. Even when they seem trivial, they bring to fruition the concentrated efforts of many people. Then too, there are the small pleasures of living in space, from somersaults in mid-air to breathtaking views from the Cupola. Even after almost five months on board, there’s always something new. For example, I haven’t yet seen the noctilucent clouds, wispy clouds that form high in the atmosphere and whose delicate glow becomes visible only after sunset, when the Sun illuminates them from below. So I’d like to stay, at least until I’ve seen the noctilucent clouds. It would be a crime to leave before that.
I’ve been joking for weeks with Anton: do the Russians really want us to come back on 13 May, so close to Victory Day celebrations? Hasn’t he heard something from his TsUP acquaintances or Roscosmos about a possible reschedule? Obviously, these are light-hearted exchanges, quips for passing the time. There’s actually no reason to expect a delay. In less than four weeks, we’ll go back to life on Earth, with all its demands and complications. We’ll have to get used to leaving the house every morning, preparing a backpack with our stuff for the day, doing the shopping and deciding for ourselves how to organize our time – at least in the gaps left by our packed post-flight schedule. If one of our kitchen appliances breaks, we won’t be able to call Houston to tell us where to find the spare parts and the repair procedure. Let’s be clear: apart from the strictly technical aspects, and we’re very well trained for those, life up here is pretty simple. Full of constraints, but also linear, pure and crystal clear, so much so that you can lose touch with all the ambiguities and irreconcilable contradictions that are a part of life on Earth. For example, does society owe something to imprisoned young offenders, or do they have a debt to society? Are they victims or perpetrators?
I’ll be speaking to a group of them tomorrow, thanks to the ham radio on board. Some of the astronauts are ham radio enthusiasts and they use it often and spontaneously, to the delight of the earthlings who yearn for an exchange with the Space Station. I’ve only made myself available for school contacts, which are made possible by an international association of tireless volunteers. Besides overseeing the organizational and technical aspects, they prepare the pupils in a series of preliminary meetings, collecting their questions and sending them to us beforehand. As it happens, the audio quality isn’t always high, and it’s a shame to make someone repeat a question, losing precious seconds of what little time we have – about ten minutes, when the Space Station is visible from the ground station in use.
The kids I’ll be speaking to attend school at a young offender institution and, judging from the questions they sent, it seems they have found many similarities between life on the Space Station and life in prison. I know they’ve probably inflicted suffering on others, and yet I can’t help but feel some tenderness towards them, a strong desire to reassure them, tell them that they will have a second chance. We all make mistakes when we’re young; we all step out of line. Those with fortunate childhoods and youth, like mine, usually don’t face serious consequences: if we slip up, a safety net awaits us. Yet some aren’t that lucky. Victims and perpetrators at once, but above all, young human beings with their entire lives ahead of them.
International Space Station, 26 April 2015
My birthday cake is a sweet and sticky lemon tart that pops out of one of the standard greenish-grey food packets. There are no candles to blow out, because my thirty-eighth birthday is not a good enough reason to strike a match in the open cabin. To make up for it, Terry decorated the tart with some coloured letters that say ‘Happy Birthday’, and he’s obviously rummaged through the bag of decorations to find a gaudy banner and a little hat for each of us.
We celebrate in the Service Module, now home to Gennadi and Misha, who arrived with Scott about a month ago. Gennadi, as usual, has our small party laughing boisterously at anecdotes from his previous spaceflights. I can’t be sure, but I suspect that some of them are actually true, or that they contain at least more than 10 per cent truth, the minimum imposed on combat pilots in entertainers’ clothes by a universal, if unwritten rule. Gennadi has a wide repertoire to draw from, since this is his fifth mission. A skilled and well-respected cosmonaut, next June he will beat the record for the longest total stay in space. When he goes back home in September, he will have made history by having accumulated more than 800 days in orbit. His outrageously irreverent humour won’t make the history books, but his odd habit of never cutting his hair in space may get a footnote.
Alongside Gennadi and his extravagant personality, Misha can sometimes seem timid, with his sensible, contained nature and his kind and sedate ways. He’s completely lacking that touch of callousness most of us astronauts have developed, at least outwardly, though it may not necessarily correspond to a genuine disposition. It was Misha who brought a recording of the sounds of nature on board, so that now, on weekends, as we float through the Space Station and pass within range of various computers’ speakers, we can imagine we’re in a rainy meadow, or, a bit further, on an ocean shore, and then in a forest ringing with birdsong. Before becoming an astronaut, Misha was a policeman, a job Scott knows well, since both of his parents were police officers. The two men will have a chance to explore this and many other subjects, since both will be on board for an entire year, a shared destiny they were anxious to celebrate when they arrived a month ago, and squeezed through the Soyuz hatch together to join us in the Space Station.
A surprising birthday gift from Earth arrived with them. I’m not sure how he did it, since it seems like an impossible undertaking, but Lionel somehow managed to get some packets of food made especially for me included in the Soyuz cargo. While I was training in the States, he went on a top-secret mission to Italy and along with Chef Stefano, now friends with both of us, he developed some dishes just for me. We ate together, he on Earth and I in space, during our usual video call. The menu? Delicious monkfish in a delicate, creamy sauce, broccoli and almonds, and red rice with asparagus tips. This is without a doubt the most sophisticated meal ever consumed in space!
This evening, we celebrate with the usual packets and cans. And thanks to the recent arrival of Dragon, the party is enriched by a rare pleasure: ice cream. Not only do we have a little stockpile on board, but today we can gorge without guilt: Mission Control actually asked us to eat all the remaining ice cream before tomorrow, since they need to make room in the freezer for scientific samples. As trained and fearless astronauts, aware of the gravity of the situation but not the least bit daunted, we assured them that the mission would be accomplished, cost what it might. Science is worth some sacrifices. In any case, we’ll be able to compensate for the evening’s excesses over the coming days. We’re expecting the arrival of a Progress cargo vehicle, which will bring us the usual modest but welcome delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables.
The party ends reasonably early, because tomorrow is a workday, and we don’t want to stay in the Service Module too late, since Anton and Gennadi sleep here. Terry and I are night owls, so we go to the Cupola as usual. It’s dark, and we keep the lights off, helping each other find the right lenses from among the many that are stuck with Velcro under the windows. Scott has retreated to his crew quarters. Terry and I have a sense that our time in space is quickly slipping away, while Scott has long months ahead of him. Since his arrival, he’s adopted the healthy approach of the marathon runner, someone who knows how to preserve his strength for the long run. He started his mission at a measured pace and, having been on the ISS once before for six months about four years ago, he was immediately ready to get to work both efficiently and autonomously. He also gave us some useful suggestions. As an example: Terry and I never questioned the instruction of closing the access to the Lab window with a rigid panel. Thanks to Scott, we were authorized to cover it simply with a curtain. Now, much more often, we can see a pair of legs sprouting from the floor, Scott’s in particular, since he loves to take pictures with long telephoto lenses, and it’s impossible to use them in the Cupola because of the distorting effects of the window scratch panes.
Another new thing Scott has taught us is to pay particular attention to the concentration of CO2. The carbon dioxide we produce constantly by breathing is removed with special equipment, but the air in the Space Station is definitely not what you’d breathe in a forest: CO2 levels above 3 millimetres of mercury are the norm up here, and that’s a hundred times more than the average on the Earth’s surface. Yet until Scott arrived, we’d never really paid any attention to it. The first few weeks on board, I had a few suspicious headaches and persistent tiredness, especially at the end of the day, though nothing that would get in the way of my working efficiently. Above all, nothing that could be definitively associated with elevated levels of carbon dioxide. Scott, on the other hand, is practically a human CO2 sensor, and he associates specific symptoms with different levels above 2 millimetres of mercury. So Mission Control is doing everything in its power to reduce the concentration of CO2, activating two scrubbing units simultaneously whenever possible. One day, we went from almost 4 millimetres of mercury to little more than 2 within a few hours. Despite the fact that I’d never had particular problems from higher levels, the breath of fresh air made me conscious of how stale the air usually is on board, a little like the way in which a sudden silence makes us aware of a background noise we’d got used to without noticing it before. I don’t think that the excess carbon dioxide has affected my cognitive abilities, and to judge by the battery of computer-based tests I take on the computer every month there’s no evidence to that effect. But I understand Scott’s worries, all the more so considering that he’s going to be on board a lot longer than the rest of us.
Terry has gone to bed. I’m staying up a few more minutes to watch the sunrise. I smile, remembering the most amusing present I got today. A group of my friends, more or less the same age and spread across half of Europe, put together a hilarious video in which they’re singing the theme song to a cartoon from our childhood, inspired by Around the World in Eighty Days. Up here, all we need is a little more than eighty minutes. To the east, the familiar blue glow is starting to move across the horizon, a wash of colour spreading from the point where dawn will shortly arrive. I begin closing the shutters on the other side of the Cupola, the end-of-day ritual. Nothing gives me such an immediate and physical feeling of being in space as the simple act of turning the knob and hearing a direct connection with the thick shutters that close like petals over the windows. If I turn it more vigorously, they’ll close more quickly. If I turn too vigorously, I’ll hear them hitting the metal skeleton of the Cupola. It feels as if my own hands were outside.
Meanwhile, the sea of stars is slowly drying up, from east to west. The Sun lingers below the horizon before making its appearance, like a solo tenor waiting for the chorus to leave the stage before he walks onto it. Then, majestically, he appears on the scene. With dawn in my eyes, I give in to tiredness and common sense. I close the last shutters and retire to my crew quarters to float in my sleeping bag. Lying in bed to sleep? I have a faint memory of it, but I don’t miss it.