The ground is already white here in Star City and preparation for the remaining exams continues: this week Anton and I will have exams in manual reentry and manual rendezvous.
But today I thought I would write a few words about the Sokol, the pressure suit that we wear in the Soyuz. As you might know, the Sokol is custom made for each crewmember: my suit, for example, is number 422. (Yes, there’s 42 in there!).
With the exception of the gloves, the Sokol is one piece and the entire front part (chest and abdomen) can be zipped open: that’s in fact how you can put it on. Donning can be tricky when the suit, as it should be, is a tight fit in terms of crouch-to-shoulder length. In this previous logbook you can find a pictorial description of the donning sequence:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/VutLr5VQQKc
And yes, as you might have noticed watching astronauts walk in the Sokol, it’s not really meant for you to stand upright, so it forces you to bend your back forward: that’s because it’s supposed to feel comfortable when you’re laying in your Soyuz seat, with your knees bent towards your chest. 
On launch day we don the suit about three hours before launch (yes, after putting on a diaper) in one of the Energia facilities at the cosmodrome. Before leaving the building for the launch pad, we do a first leak check: that’s the scene you might have seen on video or photos, when crewmembers take turns lying in a lonely Soyuz seat in the middle of a room, while typically family members, management and some media can observe from behind a glass. Kind of awkward, actually, but that’s the way it’s done.
A second leak check is performed in the Soyuz during pre-launch operations, right after closing the hatch and turning on the com system, so we can talk to the control bunker. I’ve talked in this older logbook about the leak checks and the interfaces of the suit to the Soyuz.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/9F7RifN4rHa
Once we put on the gloves for the leak check, we don’t remove them anymore until we’re on orbit. That’s because improper donning of the gloves can introduce a leak, so we don’t mess with the gloves any more after the leak check. We do open the helmet, though, and we close it again about 5 minutes before launch.
Once in orbit, we start leak checking the Soyuz, to make sure that we have good seals and we’re not loosing atmosphere into space. After the first 15 min of the leak check, if the pressure drop is within acceptable limits, we’re allowed to remove the gloves: and believe me, it makes it a lot easier to flip the pages as you work to procedures!
With the new quick flight profile that brings us to docking in six hours, the flight to ISS is very busy and there is no time to get out of the Sokol. It’s only after docking that we can change into the more comfortable overalls, that you’re probably see astronauts wear when at hatch opening, when they finally entered the Space Station.
As for the Sokol suits: they will stay in the orbital module of the Soyuz until it’s time to wear them again for landing. But before stowing them away, there are connected to the ventilation system for a few hours so they can dry!
20/10/2014