Monthly Archives: March 2012

If you’re working hard, you’re working too hard!

Getting the water bags in their pouches and adjusting the bite valves before the run.

EVA training in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) is hard work, especially when you are very inexperienced (like me!) and you still need to learn how not to fight against the suit, how to optimize your movements, how make things easier for yourself.

“If you’re working hard, you’re working too hard” is what veteran spacewalker Suni Williams likes to say. One of many great pieces of advice she gave me last Tuesday, when she found the time to get in the suit to coach me in my second EVA run.

However… easier said than done. For my entire run I was at maximum cooling, with 75GPH of water flowing in my Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment to remove heat from my body. That’s 75 gallons per hour, or make it almost 300 litres per hour.

Ready to don the helmet and pressurize

Fortunately provisions are made for astronauts to be able to drink in the suit. We are required to carry a water bag velcroed to the inside of the upper torso, in front of our chest. There is a straw sticking through the neck ring with a blue bite valve, that you can see in the picture. It’s very similar to commercial products used by bikers and hikers, except that our bag is contained in a non-flammable pouch.

How much water do we have? The bag holds 32oz, which is almost one litre. Well, I drank it all during my four-hour run last Tuesday! But then again, I’m the one running at maximum cooling.

I’ll get more efficient with time and I'll be able to conserve energy. My third run next week will be five hours. Let’s see if I’ll be able to save some water for the one hour that is still missing!

Patches, Watches, and Sunglasses, episode I: the patch

Patches, like watches and sunglasses, are a pilot’s thing. Worn on flight suits, leather jackets, or T-shirts, pinned on corridor walls or printed out on coffee mugs for the briefing room or the squadron mess, they are part of the decorum at every group of flyer’s hideout. They usually convey messages for the happy few who know how to read them, and if sometimes the message is encoded with an esoteric subtlety, sometimes… well, not that much (like that patch of a squadron whose name or country of origin I won’t mention, proudly sporting the motto “pulling G’s” above a stylized bulldog actively pulling on…a poor lady's G-string clenched between his teeth. Speak about military finesse…).

Luca on our first day at EAC

Tom Cruise on his first day at Top Gun

Find the seven differences...

Yes, the hair (or lack of) is one of them, but the main one is: Luca is not (yet) wearing his class patch...

The astronaut corps is, for good or bad, no different than any other group of fliers anywhere else in the world. Therefore, we quickly realized, one month into Basic Training, that we had to have our class patch, to establish us as a team. And like every patch in the world, following an immemorial and yet never uttered tradition, it was designed… around a beer, in a bar (well, a bar/restaurant, to be honest). The brainstorming was intense, as you can imagine, and (one of) its result(s) was the general design: a helmet in the center, symbolizing the astronauts’ job that was now ours, framed by our individual flags and ESA’s to unite them, the helmet’s golden visor reflecting a “09” referring to a launch countdown as well as evoking the year of our recruitment. We celebrated this great achievement, one of the first steps towards defining the identity of this special group of people.

Charta of the European astronaut corps

Later on, we added in the design 6 white stars representing the six individuals, and we included an extra layer around the design, to encapsulate the motto of the European Astronaut Corps: Sapientia, Populus, Audacia, Cultura, Exploratio. Thereby, we were linking our class to the groups of preceding European astronauts in an affiliation that we are all very proud of.

As the result was now quite solemn, we added our class name, the Shenanigans, as a center element. I won’t elaborate here on how astronauts classes pick (or deserve) their names, same for individuals’ call signs, but let me tell you it is somehow related to the sense of humor and practical jokes that we, still now, enjoy together.

With the design approved, we started the next step: production… to quickly realize that no one of us could boast of artistic talent, or even drawing, as a skill on his/her resume. So after a couple of ugly short-lived draft attempts, we decided to turn to talented individuals, and luckily there were some in our entourage. The guys from spacepatches.nl, having dealt with patches for a long time, kindly offered their help and came up with the layout of the flags, that reminds of the ISS cupola. And my good buddy V. Gibaud was finally responsible for integrating all those ideas in an artistic way, for drawing the central helmet part, and for producing the patch. Let me tell you it was no easy task, given the expectations of high-maintenance hard-to-please over-achievers like the astronauts sometimes are. There is no word to describe his talent, and the final result was a total score in every possible way.

ESA astronaut class of 2009 patch

We now proudly sport it on our training flight-suits and jackets, we pin it on corridor walls, and we even printed it out on our coffee mugs… without mentioning iPhone wallpapers! We sometimes distribute it as a token of appreciation from our group after training or at public events. It has flown in planes, sky-dived, bungee-jumped from 233m high, gone underwater for spacesuit training and on top of the Mont Blanc so far, and I have no doubt it will fly to space and back quite a number of times in the years to come. Godspeed, Shenanigans' patch!

A day as a cyborg

On March 5th I had my first suited EVA training event in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. Here are some impressions from that special day.

Days like today don’t happen often. Days when you experience something radically new. Days when unusual constraints force you to rethink your interaction with the environment, when your brain learns to give new meaning to sensory information, when your muscles acquire new patterns of movement to overcome previously unknown impediments. Days when you learn to be a cyborg.

Happy to be here! (Credit: NASA)

On such days even your eyes can betray you for a moment. As the crane lowers me into the water of NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab, it takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and refocus. The effect of the visor is such that objects seem to be further away than they really are. As a result, the tremendous size of the giant 12-meter-deep pool appears even greater. In it lies a dormant creature of metal: a faithful replica of the International Space Station, outlined in its external contours. The shells of the pressurized modules, the truss segments, the antennas, the cables… all that and many more details are duplicated in this underwater world to provide astronauts with a realistic environment in which to train for Extravehicular Activities (EVA).

I have been extensively briefed on all aspects of today’s work and I have explored the Station under water several times while scuba diving. Yet it feels utterly different, almost surreal, to be looking at it from inside the suit.

In an Adjustable Portable Foot Restraint for an exercise with the Body Restraint Tether (Credit: NASA)

By the end of my EVA training flow I will have become intimately familiar with the Station, with the translation paths, the worksites, the hazards. But today’s three-hour run is mainly for me to become accustomed to the EMU, the pressurized suit that allows astronauts to perform spacewalks in space. On orbit, the suit is a closed-loop life support system that provides oxygen, ventilation, cooling and CO2 scrubbing. In the pool the life-support backpack is inactive and our survival underwater is guaranteed by an umbilical that ties us to the surface and supplies us with Nitrox to breathe. To prevent overheating, water is circulated through 80 meters of tubing woven in our full-body Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG). When we speak on the voice loop, the whole facility hears us: the other suited astronaut in the water, the support divers, the test director, the environmental control console operator and, of course, the instructor in the control room. The latter is typically the one talking to us, as he follows our every move on four camera views: two from our helmet-mounted cameras, two from the camera diver assigned to each one of us. “Us”, by the way, is me and veteran spacewalker Tracy Caldwell, who is determined to make this both an enjoyable and an effective first run for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better coach.

For the next three hours my main task is to explore the limits of the suit, to identify my work envelope in it, to get accustomed to its size and to the limited field of view, to practice translating and reorienting my body, to pinpoint possible improvement areas in the suit fit. There is no rotating the arms outside of the limited envelope allowed by the shoulder joints. There is no turning the neck to look up or to the side: the whole body has to pivot. There are no quick movements: changing one’s orientation requires deliberate effort and patience. “Don’t fight the suit!” is the common mantra. If you do, you’ll only exhaust yourself.

Divers working on my weighout (Credit: NASA)

I remind myself of that as the safety divers release me from the donning station and we all descend together to the bottom of the pool. As the water pressure increases, the suit compensates to maintain an overpressure of about 4,3 psi. A rubber Valsalva device is glued inside my helmet: I can press my nostrils onto it to equalize my middle ear as pressure increases. Once at the bottom, the divers start working on the weighout: by distributing weights in different parts of the suit they establish neutral buoyancy and then try to neutralize the tendencies of the suit to rotate. The more these buoyancy-related effects are minimized, the more effective and orbit-like the training will be. It’s really an art, rather than a science, and the expertise of the divers is precious.

Since this is my first weighout, there is no baseline to start from and the process takes a bit longer. I don’t mind at all. Right now I am simply overcome by happiness and I am thankful for having the time to relax in the suit and savour this exhilarating moment!

Some simple tasks are incorporated into today’s introductory run. After practicing translating along the truss and on the US Lab along handrails and soft gap spanners, I have a chance to use the Pistol Grip Tool, a motor-driven screw driver, to release some bolts on the GPS antennas. Then the divers swim me to the airlock and I get to try the translation path to the front face of the truss and do a safety tether swap there. I also get my first experience with entering the Portable Foot Restraint - quite a challenging task! – and I practice retrieving tools from the external toolbox. Last but not least, I start to grasp the challenge of using the Body Restraint Tether, and this is probably worth a story of its own.

Translating zenith from Lab to Node 2 (Credit: NASA)

We conclude the run with a ten-minute exposure to the effects of being inverted – not a problem in real weightlessness, of course, but somewhat an issue in the pool. Finally, just beneath the water surface, the overpressure in the suit is reduced for safety considerations and then the divers remove one of my gloves, so that I can experience a sudden depressurization.

After three hours, a mere half of the nominal 6-hour duration that trainees reach by the fourth run, I am quite exhausted. The most trivial tasks in the suit require physical effort and mental concentration and the limited field of view, range of motion and tactile perception make it difficult to maintain awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings.

I know very well that big challenges lie ahead. Yet it is truly exhilarating to have taken the first step on this path. This is a day I had been looking forward to for a long time. It’s my first day as a cyborg, and the cyborg can survive in outer space.

“Station, Munich, on space-to-ground 1″

"Good morning, Munich", so begins each new day at the Columbus Control Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, just outside of Munich, when the crew onboard ISS calls down for the morning daily planning conference (DPC). The call, which normally is received at 08:00 UTC (9:00 am local time in Germany) is literally an-out-of-this-world teleconference between the astronauts onboard ISS and the flight control teams in Houston, Huntsville, Moscow, Munich, and Tsukuba, Japan. The astronauts and the flight control teams around the world discuss any last minute changes to the activities scheduled for the day and clear up any questions that remain.

Columbus Control Center in Munich

The voice communication between the astronauts and the flight control team is the responsibility of a single person, known as the capsule communicator or Capcom at Mission Control Center-Houston at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). It is a position that dates back to the beginning of manned space flight in the 1960's, when the astronauts flew onboard the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules. Traditionally, astronauts have performed this role, the idea being that astronauts can translate instructions from the engineering-speak of flight controllers to a more operationally useful language, and more importantly, understand the operational needs of their fellow astronauts in space.

With the launch and docking of the European laboratory module "Columbus" to the ISS in 2008, it became necessary for a European flight control team to oversee daily operations in Columbus. Thus was born the Columbus Control Center (COL-CC) and with it, the position of European Capcom or Eurocom.

The Eurocom console at EAC, from where we can work when we are not at COL-CC

It is also why I am here this week at COL-CC to participate in a Joint Multi-Segment Training (JMST) simulation, which is engineering-speak for a training simulation of the daily activities onboard ISS, involving all the international partners. For, although much of our time is spent in training, as you no doubt will know from reading this blog, we also have many other duties and responsibilities as astronauts, especially for those of us not yet assigned to a mission. For Thomas, Tim, and myself that means spending part of our time working as Eurocom at COL-CC.

"Eurocom, Capcom, on the Xcom loop for morning DPC coordination", calls David Saint-Jacques (@Astro_DavidS), my Canadian Space Agency astronaut colleague, who, in the role of Capcom, is currently sitting at JSC in Houston and participating in the same JMST.

"Good morning, David", I reply.

"Good morning, Andreas. When the crew calls down for today's morning DPC, I will be handing over to you and when you are finished, you will be handing over to Glavny in Moscow", informs David. Glavny, or Главный in Cyrillic, is the Russian counterpart to Capcom at Mission Control Center-Moscow.

I am a little nervous today, as this is my first JMST and the first time I am speaking with Capcom in Houston over-the-loops. In addition to the four European training simulations that I have already completed, I need to participate in three JMST's before I will be certified to work in real-time ops. Thomas and Tim were both certified earlier this year and have already worked a few real shifts on-console.

During today's simulation, the crew-surrogates who play the role of astronauts onboard ISS include not only training instructors from EAC and JSC, but also our astronaut colleague Hans Schlegel, who flew aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-122 in February 2008, which delivered and installed Columbus on the ISS. Today, the crew-surrogates will perform the "Energy" and "Meteron" experiments in Columbus and throw as many questions as possible at me and the other members of the flight control team, in an attempt to anticipate all of the real questions that the crew onboard ISS might ask, when they, in a few weeks from now, actually perform the experiments under microgravity conditions.

Hans Schlegel performing an EVA during the installation of Columbus

Hans and I are in the middle of the morning DPC, discussing the "Energy" experiment, when the yellow light of a caution suddenly flashes up on the telemetry board. A power outlet in Columbus has tripped, possibly due to an over-current.

"COL-Flight, COL-SYS, on your loop. I see a caution in Columbus. PDU outlet trip, possibly due to an over-current. We need crew to perform a sniff test in Columbus for burning odour", reports the Columbus Systems controller on the flight director's voice loop.

"Eurocom copies", I report on the flight director's loop, while Hans continues speaking on the space-to-ground loop, unaware of the simultaneous conversation going on in the control center.

"Break, break, Hans", I interrupt him mid-sentence. "We have a caution in Columbus. PDU outlet trip. We need you to go to Columbus and smell for burning odour in the deck area of the starboard end cone."

"Good words", confirms COL-SYS on the flight director's loop, indicating that I have correctly relayed the information to the crew.

The morning DPC is interrupted, while Hans pretends to go to Columbus to determine if there is an actual fire. Hans is following carefully the script that the simulation directors have meticulously prepared weeks in advance and which will test the reactions of the flight control team to unexpected situations. A minute later, he is back on the loops.

"Munich, Station, on space-to-ground 1 for possible fire in Columbus", calls Hans. "I detect no burning odour in Columbus or any other sign of fire."

"Probable malfunction. No further crew action at this time", reports COL-SYS, who has been listening in on the space-to-ground loop.

"Hans, I copy no sign of fire in Columbus", I repeat. "Thanks for checking for us. We have no further actions for you at this time. We will troubleshoot the caution from ground."

COL-SYS and the rest of the flight controllers at COL-CC kick into gear, trying to determine what equipment tripped the caution alarm. The morning DPC is not even finished yet and we have already had our first malfunction of the day. It is going to be a long simulation!

But testing ourselves against all possible malfunctions and emergencies, is what will hone our skills as flight controllers and, in a few months hopefully, will allow me to sit on console in real-time and assist André Kuipers (@Astro_Andre) and his crewmates with their daily activities onboard ISS.