Astronaut Class of 2009

I have been a bit absent from this blog in the last couple of months: my apologies for that. Believe it or not, I was given a pretty long break from formal ISS training - although I have kept my head in the books! It’s been a busy time nevertheless: I’ve taken care of some personal matters, like a move, and I have worked my way through piles of documents, unanswered correspondence and all kinds of little and big open actions that had accumulated in over a year and a half of almost constant travel around the world for training. So I’m ready to start off with a clear mind, a clean inbox and a decluttered hard disc into the next year and a half of almost constant travel that will lead me to the ultimate voyage to the ISS in December 2014.

But hey, wait a moment. Aren’t astronauts preparing for ISS supposed to be fully immersed in training for the 2.5 years prior to their flight (or somewhat less, if they’re veterans)? How is it possible – you might wonder – that the schedulers gave me such a long break? The trick is that I got a bit of a head start. In summer 2011 I was assigned to the Reserve Astronaut training (thank you ESA!). That’s a role peculiar to the smaller ISS partners and it entails receiving about a year worth of ISS training, so that the reserve astronaut would be able to get a late start into an ISS training flow to replace a colleague from the same space agency that had to be pulled out of a crew no later than, say, a year and a half prior to launch. That’s very different from the normal backup system in the ISS crew rotation, which is called “single flow to launch” and which I can explain another time, if you’re curious.

As part of the reserve astronaut preparation I have completed the training on ISS systems, including some emergency simulations and I’ve acquired my certifications in EVA (also see this blog) and in robotics. In Star City I have completed the classes on the Soyuz system as a left-seat flight engineer, a pretty extensive addition to the regular reserve astronaut flow, that would normally only entail the less comprehensive training for the right-seat crewmember. And of course the Star City winter also offered me and Thomas the chance of practicing our survival skills.

As nice as it has been for me to start training about a year before getting a flight assignment last summer, this has made me a somewhat unusual case for our expedition schedulers, who sure prefer to have a “synched-up” crew. So, here’s where my lightly-loaded winter has come from. Synching up: done.

It’s been a gradual start back into training. Last week at the European Astronaut Centre I had a quick refresher on the Columbus payloads and I retook my Columbus systems operator certification, which I had taken the first time three years ago with the rest of the Shenanigans as part of our basic training. Operator-level training teaches you how to deal with malfunctions that are serious enough to set off a warning alarm. Later this year I’ll be back in the Columbus mockup for the specialist training: that’s when you learn to take components apart and put them back together for maintenance ops. Looking forward to get my hands dirty!

This weekend was time to pack my luggage again and make my way to Star City. It’s been the familiar routine – a late night arrival at the Domodedovo airport, a quick disembarkment from the most forward seat I could get in an effort to cut the waiting time at passport control and then, after customs, the familiar affable face of Nikolay, the Star City ESA driver, meeting me. The ride to Star City has taken roughly an hour – it would take several hours in the daylight traffic. I’ve been given the key to my usual room on the ESA floor of the Profilaktorium, still with my pull-up bar in the door frame and some gym clothes I had forgotten last time. It’s the nice thing about coming back to Star City: even if it’s been a while, it feels like you never left.

Soyuz sims, manual rendez-vous and docking, manual descent, Russian segment motion control system, European Robotic Arm, Orlan… all of that is on my plate for the next five weeks. It’s the first time I’m formally here for Expedition 42/43 training. The schedule that our guardian angels from the ESA office, Yuri and Anna, have left on my desk actually includes the events of crewmates Terry and Anton. I’m somehow pleased to notice this little detail and I look for any common training units.

First thing today I will have two-hour Soyuz sim briefing with Anton and on Tuesday we’ll have a four-hour session together in the Soyuz simulator. I’ve been in the sim often as a single trainee, now I’m really looking forward to working in there with my actual Soyuz commander. Somehow I have the feeling it will be fun.

The ESA-developed Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, is the flagship of the ISS cargo spacecraft program. No doubt about that: even though I’m just a rookie, I’ve heard it so many times from experienced astronauts and cosmonauts to quickly become convinced.

About as big as a London two-decker, the ATV has more than sheer size to amaze us. It’s the only cargo vehicle that stays docked to the Station for 6 months, thus greatly increasing its inhabitable volume: for the long duration astros and cosmos, a welcome luxury.

It transports all kinds of dry and wet cargo, air, other gases, fuel (and a guitar that was specially modified so I could take it on orbit, although its modification doesn’t include a magic switch to make me play it well).

Thanks to its powerful engines, and to the fact that it docks on the main axis of the Station, it can perform reboosts, to help stabilize the ISS on its orbit, or DAMs, the Debris Avoidance Maneuvers that every now and then are implemented to make absolutely sure no dangerous “space junk” hits the orbiting lab.

On top of all this, after it is launched, it travels for millions of kilometres to finally dock, completely automatically – thanks to European driven technology – with a demonstrated precision of about a centimetre. As a pilot, and as an astronaut training to perform manually the same docking in a Soyuz spacecraft, I’m totally impressed.

So the question I would ask, if I were on the other side of this blog, is: “if it does everything automatically, what kind of training is needed, if any?” Strange as it may sound, there is the need for quite a bit of training: let’s see why.

When I say that the ATV does everything automatically, I don’t mean independently: during all phases of flight – launch, separation, autonomous flight, docking, docked flight, undocking – a Team of engineers, based in Toulouse at the ATV Control Center (ATV-CC), studies all the telemetry data, and is capable of adjusting and controlling all aspects of the flight. However, in the very last parts of the rejoin and docking phases, when ATV is already really close to the Station, the computer on board is responsible for everything: alignment, speed, attitude, engine control. ATV is even in charge of checking that everything is going well: should it detect a problem, its own internal computers would react to prevent any safety issues. The engineers still would have the capability to send commands just in case something still doesn’t work, but all in all ATV is now working independently.

Through all this, it looks as though the crew on board the Station has very little to do, other than wait for the goodies to arrive. In reality, from their vantage point, the crew continuously monitors the spacecraft through the Station’s video cameras, and are also capable of sending commands to ATV: Hold (that is, stop where you are), Retreat (go back to the last waypoint) or Abort (go away as fast as you can!). Once ATV is within 11m, the crew has full responsibility to monitor and take action – the ground commands would not arrive in time to be effective, so the crew on the ISS is in charge. We train to correctly read the telemetry parameters and to quickly react should anything go awry. Things can get really exciting, because a lot can happen in a very short time: the corridor ATV has to maintain is very small, and the parameters to read - and react to - are many. That’s why it takes two people to perform this delicate task, with very distinct responsibilities, and why it takes quite a bit of Crew Resource Management (CRM) to perform well.

Once ATV docks, it needs to be prepared for the docked phase of flight – this require making sure that there are no leaks, that the atmosphere is not contaminated, and that all the systems are operational. All this also requires training.

After that, nominal activities like dry cargo transfer, water transfer, gas ops, all require training to cover how it’s done correctly and safely, taking into consideration the differences between ATV, the other modules and the other cargo ships. Inevitably, a very important part of the training includes what to do in case of emergency – fire or depressurization – all the way to a very quick undock. Undocking also requires training, since there’s some interaction between the crew on board and COL-CC, and the procedures need to be followed correctly and quickly – two words that seldom go well together!

All the training is done in Cologne, where our ESA instructors do their best to teach us all the peculiarities of ATV – then we have a final exam in Star City, since ATV docks to the Russian segment of the ISS.

When I started training on the ATV, I couldn’t help but think “This is going to be a piece of cake!” But that cake turned sour very quickly, when trying to see everything at once and remember what to do and how, I managed time after time to send the wrong command, at the wrong time, or failed to do so, sweat pouring from my over concentrated brow. That’s when I was convinced that ATV training was necessary.

Whistling, of all things. Like my fellow “Shenanigan” Alex right next to me, I’m puckering my lips and trying diligently, but the results are modest. Whistling may be a trivial enough task, but not when the atmosphere in our Orlan suits is now down to less than half of the normal sea-level pressure, way too rarefied for any proper sounds to be produced. Even the pitch of our voices is changed as the thinner atmosphere blows on our vocal chords. And the hoarseness in my throat is accompanied by an overall unusual feeling in my airways: not at all unpleasant or disturbing, just very new to me.

In truth, most of today’s exercise hasn’t been much different than several simulations we have run last week at the Cosmonaut Training Center, in Star City. We have put on our blue water-cooling undergarment with its small tubes in which cooled water is circulated to remove heat from our body. We have applied power to the Orlan suit and its computer and we have run the initial configuration checks. Finally we have “entered” the suit, as the Russian friends say. Indeed, you don’t put on the Orlan, you step into it: you connect the communication lines from your headsets, the water pipes from the undergarment, the medical telemetry cables that transmit data about your heart rate, your body temperature, your respiratory frequency; you turn on the fan and the water pump; and then you step into the suit via the “door” in the back and close it behind you by pulling on a steel cable from the front. Simple enough!

Once inside the suit, we have moved on to perform the airlock operations, meaning all the actions that need to be completed prior to removing all air from the airlock and opening the hatch to space. First of all, how about checking that the suit does not leak? To do that, we open the oxygen lines to the suit from the on-board supply and we basically blow the suit up, not much differently than you would an air balloon, and we observe what happens for about a minute. Just like your air balloon is not completely air tight and will eventually deflate, so the Orlan suit does inevitably leak a little bit. We do observe the needle of the differential pressure gauge moving, but as long as the drop is within acceptable limits, the oxygen from the suit bottles will be enough to compensate the losses and keep the suit inflated for many hours.

I must admit that I have paid special attention to the leak check today. After all, when we did this back in Star City nobody was going to make vacuum around us. But here, at the site of the Orlan manufacturer Zvezda, that’s exactly the plan. We are, after all, inside a vacuum chamber.

After the leak check we re-equalize the pressure with the outside and deflate the Orlan. At this point we open again the supply lines to the suit to make sure that we replace all the air inside with pure oxygen. In previous exercises we have simulated this step, but we have never really performed it. Think about it: if the pressure around you will stay at about 1 atmosphere (our normal sea-lever atmospheric pressure), in order to practice working in an inflated suit you need to pressurize it above atmospheric pressure. In fact, about 1,4 atmospheres, or 0,4 atmospheres above the pressure outside. No need to breath pure oxygen in that case: there’s enough oxygen in the normal air. But today we’re going to make vacuum around us, so the pressure inside the suit will eventually be really only 0,4 atmospheres. At this pressure, our normal air does not contain enough oxygen for us to breath, since about 80% of it is actually made of nitrogen: that’s why we need to make sure that we replace all the air with pure oxygen.

Going down to 0,4 atmospheres also presents another problem, one that divers are very familiar with: the risk of decompression sickness. And so, after making sure that no nitrogen is left inside the suit, we need to wait for half an hour to make sure that the nitrogen also diffuses out of our body. No fast forwarding this step today! Now we’re ready: we simulate opening the venting valve to space and the support team turns on the vacuum pump. In a few minutes, it will bring the pressure down to 0.01 mm of mercury: that’s the pressure you would encounter at 65-70 km of altitude. For all practical purposes, it’s vacuum.

As air is progressively pumped out of the chamber, I hear the usual crackles of the suit as it inflates. I feel the space inside the suit grow and the soft internal membranes against my arms and legs rigidize and become hard walls. Everything feels familiar, even as my mind is conscious that the pressure outside is really dropping this time. And then, all of a sudden, the difference becomes obvious: the background sounds from the outside, of which I had not even been aware, become clearly muffled until they completely disappear. We’re acoustically isolated from our surroundings, except from the voice of the support team reaching us via the com cable.

I’m happy about the muffled sounds. I’m happy about the change in the voice pitch and the unusual feeling in my airways. I’m happy about all little signs that remind me about the uniqueness of this experience and I’m grateful to the doctor on console that encourages us to try and whistle. Astronaut training is all about making extraordinary experiences as familiar as possible before we even encounter them. But sometimes I like to take a minute and just enjoy the extraordinary.

Watch the video below, filmed during our training with the Orlan spacesuits:

Orlan and airlock operations exercise - video filming credits to GCTCBefore being allowed into the vacuum chamber for a  vacuum test, and certainly before any further spacewalk training under water, Alex and I had to show proficiency in operating all Orlan controls in the pressurized suit and in performing all pre-EVA and post-EVA airlock operations in this dedicated training facility at the Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City. The facility offers a perfect replica of all airlock valves and control panels, as well as the airlock hatch. It also includes a special weightlessness simulation trick. Once we enter the Orlan, the suits are suspended and the weight is counterbalanced: this way, by pushing against a fixed structure with relatively little effort we can move the roughly 200 kg of combined body and suit weight. It’s a very realistic training that builds skills and confidence.

More photos of the Orlan training (on Flickr)

Well, no, not really. I have only just started to tackle the great deal of skills and knowledge I will need to acquire on my journey to the launchpad. Still, the seven days I spent kayaking and camping in Alaska this last September under the expert guidance of two wonderful NOLS instructors, Josh and Ashley, taught me a lot of lessons that will hopefully make me a better crewmember on the International Space Station.

NOLS expeditions are one of several space-analogue training environments that are meant to foster team-building and to practice “human behaviour and performance” skills – intangible, yet invaluable personal assets ranging from leadership/followership and decision making to self-awareness and communication, just to name a few. (Two more such analogue training environments are NEEMO and CAVES – if you haven’t already, go and read Tim’s and Andy’s accounts on this blog!)

I had the privilege of sharing the experience with three veteran NASA astronauts and military aviators - Jeff Williams, Terry Virts and Barry “Butch” Wilmore - and two members of our “Shenanigans” NASA/JAXA sister class, the “Chumps”: Kimiya Yui, himself a military test pilot, and Kjell Lindgren, an emergency medicine physician and former flight doc. And of course the team would not have been complete without some outstanding representatives of the ground operations folks: CAPCOM Hal Getzelman and Expedition 42 Lead Flight Director Tomas Gonzalez Torres.

We set out for an ambitious week-long kayaking itinerary – tents, tarps, fuel and kitchen supplies to be packed in our kayaks on the way from one campsite to the next, exploring the beauties of Prince William Sound on the way.

But September Alaska weather forced us to change our plan considerably. Higher seas than our kayaking skills could master prevented us from paddling on several days. Strong winds forced us to change our focus towards maintaining a safe and functional campsite, while chilly temperatures and pouring rain were our most faithful companions. Yet we had a great time together and we learned a lot about each other and about facing challenges as a team.

Here are some lessons I want to remember and to share.

1. Be respectful and take interest in others.
Looking back at our week in Alaska, I can’t help to marvel at the warm atmosphere and people’s good spirits, even though we were chilled, wet and forced into inactivity for several days by adverse weather. I think we were a group with a good tolerance for adversity, but what really made us strong, in my opinion, is the unconditional respect we offered one another and the genuine interest we took in each other.

2. Always pay attention to details. No excuses.
It is taken for granted that astronauts possess the skills required for a spaceflight: years of training are devoted to making sure that that is the case. What makes the difference in daily work is the attention you put into every detail. In the field or in space, physical discomfort can be distracting, but it’s no excuse. Your fingers might be numbed by the cold water and you might be looking forward to changing into warmer clothes, but you still need to devote all the necessary time and attention to each one of those knots, to make sure the tent is properly secured. When the winds pick up at night, you’ll be happy you did so.

3. Actively think of ways you can help.
Be it filling up bags of water at the stream, moving a tent that was about to be flooded, heading out in the rain to do the dishes at the shore or boiling water for the group, during the entire trip every task was immediately and spontaneously tackled by somebody noticing the need and volunteering to take care of it. I suspect that this is how the best ISS crews function.

4. Take care of your gear.
Whether on a remote campsite in Alaska or on the ISS, you can’t just stop at the shop for new clothes or equipment. And yet it requires discipline and a conscious effort to even simply keep track of all your gear. It took me until the end of the trip to find a reasonable way of organizing my water proof bags – and I was still on the learning curve. No surprise that inventory management is a big issue on ISS.

5. Take care of yourself.
Taking care of yourself is the first step in discharging your duties towards the group. If you neglect taking care of yourself, you’ll become a liability to the team. In the field or in space, it’s your responsibility to stay healthy and in good spirits!

6. Seek help when you need it. If you’re offered help, accept it.
In spite of your best efforts of taking care of yourself, you might be in need of some help occasionally. Speak up and ask for help, as long as the problem is still manageable. Accept the help that is offered to you. Thanks so much Ashley for offering that warm cap and that thermos of hot water when my lips were turning blue in the kayak!

7. Clean up after yourself.
On the Alaskan campsites or on the ISS, nobody wants to clean up your mess. Leave the place as you found it, or maybe a bit better. Even if it means digging a “toilet” with a shovel and using sphagnum moss instead of toilet paper.

8. Overcome inertia.
Pretty early on our trip we were forced to accept the fact that the adverse weather would not allow us to kayak most of the time. In fact, when hurricane-strength winds were forecast in the Prince William Sound area we had to shift the focus from kayaking to evaluating risks related to weather and on mitigating them by appropriate campsite selection and setup. However, on our last full day in the field the weather seemed to allow at least some chance of kayaking about 12 miles and moving camp outside of our protected channel. Yet the chilly wind and the pouring rain didn’t make the thought very attractive.

It would have been easy to settle in the routine we had been forced into, possibly just venturing out for some local paddling, knowing that we would be able to come back to our familiar campsite. No risk of hypothermia, no uncertainty related to weather outside our canal or to the new campsite. Yet after some discussion we decided that all risks and uncertainties were manageable. We were able to break the trap of inertia and challenge ourselves to really move camp for the first time through rather harsh weather conditions. When we arrived to our destination at Hobo Bay, we were rewarded by the intense beauty of our new campsite and by an unexpected gift - a break in the rain in the evening hours! But our greatest reward was a genuine sense of team accomplishment.

See Google+ and Flickr for more photos.