Posted on March 21, 2012 by Samantha Cristoforetti
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. 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...
Posted on January 30, 2012 by Samantha Cristoforetti
Surviving the Russian winter
On January 18th Thomas and I participated in a two-day survival training program that is mandatory for all Soyuz crewmembers and is meant to provide astronauts and cosmonauts the skills and confidence necessary to survive in cold weather. While the rescue teams typically arrive on the Soyuz landing site even before the capsule has made ground contact in case of a planned descent, an unplanned emergency reentry is a possibility at any time during autonomous flight or while docked at ISS. In the worst case scenario, even during initial ascent as a consequence of rocket failure. Here is my attempt at sharing with you our experience in the woods surrounding Star City....
