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In yesterday’s logbook we were discussing an emergency scenario, in which we received this call from a simulated Mission Control “Ammonia leak, execute emergency response! Ammonia leak, execute emergency response!” Since ammonia is highly toxic, the first action is to put on an oxygen mask. Throughout the ISS we have at least one mask, often two, in each module, ready to be used. US segment masks come with a bottle containing a 7-min supply of oxygen. That might not sound like a lot, but these masks are only used for initial response, as you’ll see. With the mask on, those of us who were in the USOS segment (US modules plus Columbus and JEM) quickly move aft to the Russian segment – that’s not only because our Soyuz vehicles are docked there, but also because of one important design difference: there are no ammonia lines in the Russian segment. Making sure that all six crewmembers are accounted for, we close the Node 1 hatch, thereby isolating ourselves from the USOS segment and the source of the leak. At that point we get rid of the external layers of clothes, potentially contaminated, and leave them in the PMA, the small adapter element between USOS and Russian segment, closing the PMA aft hatch as we retract into the Russian FGB module. Time to retrieve our respirator masks and install on them the pink ammonia filter cartridges. Swapping from the O2 mask to the ammonia respirators must be done quickly and carefully, since we don’t know what the ammonia concentration in the Russian segment atmosphere is. Assuming a contaminated atmosphere, we keep eyes closed and hold our breath while coming off the O2 mask. Once we have the respirators on, we go through a number of purging breaths to get rid of any ammonia inside the hood. Only then do we open our eyes. Once everybody is safely on respirators, it’s time to understand how much ammonia we have in the Russian segment atmosphere. For that we have a dedicated chip measurement system. In the worst case scenario, the Russian segment is contaminated to such a level that we need to evacuate Station. If the ammonia concentration is not so high, we can filter the air through our respirator cartridges via our breathing. We then stay for several hours, until the measurements show a safe atmosphere. In the lucky case that the air in the Russian segment was not contaminated, we could come off masks and breath normally. Safe, for sure, but with a lost USOS segment, at least for the moment. Picture: going through the purging procedure (ESA/S.Corvaja) Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

Remember how I have told you on several occasions about emergency simulations, both here in Houston as well as in Russia? See this logbook for example. So far we had always only three-person emergency sims with Terry and Anton, my Soyuz crewmates. As you know, however, the Station crew is composed of six people. The crew of the Soyuz before us will be there when we arrive in November and will leave in March. At that point we will officially become Expedition 43. After a couple of weeks, we will be joined by a new Soyuz crew and we’ll be back to a six-person complement. So, yesterday we had a chance to practice emergency response with our first crew of six, Expedition 42, joining Butch, Elena and Sasha. What’s different with six people working the procedures? Well, in principle it is easier, because you have more crewmembers taking care of the different steps. But, as usual with teamwork, it’s essential to have good coordination and communication, otherwise you’ll end up making it worse by getting in each other way. That’s why before the sim Expedition 42 Commander, Butch, took some time to make sure that we all understood what our roles would be during the different emergency responses. For example, in a fire scenario I was going to have the main responsibility for working at the computer to find suspected fire locations based on the telemetry signatures and to perform the power downs as required. During the depressurization response I was going to carry one of the portable pressure gauges: we monitor it after every hatch closure and, if the leak is on our side, we recalculate our new reserve time in the smaller remaining volume. Of course, an emergency response is a dynamic situation. We had a good plan going in, but we also always adjusted it real-time as required. That’s perfectly fine, as long as there is a clear communication when you hand over responsibility of a task to somebody else. I’m happy to say that our six-person team worked smoothly and efficiently together yesterday. A very good sign for our future time together on orbit! Picture: ESA/Corvaja On ammonia respirators after an ammonia leak. Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa  ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

Yesterday we had quite a special training event in the Virtual Reality lab. Terry, Butch, Anton and I all joined in practicing one of the complex choreographies in which we use the robotic arm in support of a spacewalk. In our scenario, Butch and Terry were initially the spacewalkers, which in the virtual reality lab means that they were wearing the glasses and the gloves and they were moving in the virtual Space Station scenario and interacting with it. I was the robotic operator, and I could actually observe their virtual movement on my camera views. Anton was there to help mainly with camera panning, tilting and zooming, a role we call the Robotic Workstation Assistant. In our scenario, we were dealing with a failed pump module, which had already been removed in a previous EVA and was temporarily stowed on the POA – this is like a robotic end-effector, but it’s on a fixed position on Station. We are able to install a grapple fixture on a pump module so that the POA can attach to it. First I took GCA instructions from Butch to maneuver the arm to a position where he could ingress the foot restraint which, in our simulation, was already attached to robotic end-effector. Check this older logbook if you don’t know what GCA is. Then I maneuvered him to the POA. Once Butch was in a position to get hold of the pump module handrails, we released the unit from the POA and I programmed an automatic sequence to get him to an external stowage platform, the final stowage location of the failed unit. At that point we swapped positions: Terry got in the arm, virtually holding the pump module, and I became EV2, assisting in monitoring clearances and providing GCA instructions to insert the pump module in the guidance rails of its stowage “box” . Virtual Reality lab is especially useful to practice coordination and communication, which are key to successful and smooth EVA/robotics combined operations. Moreover, the virtual reality environment provides a realistic reproduction of the lighting condition. At night, it can be very challenging to have a good view of the entire robotic arm and all the clearances! Picture: an EVA crewmember handling a pump module in space a few years ago. Just like on our scenario, he’s attached at the end of the arm. Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook   #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS  qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne G ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

Yesterday Terry and I spent most of the day learning more about the IMAX project, that I wrote about on Tuesday. Turns out that it’s not only about recording images, but also about properly capturing the sounds of the Space Station! Having spent a couple of hours listening to Greg talk about his job, which consists of putting the sound in movies, has likely changed my movie experience forever. There is so much work that I never even consciously perceived. Later Terry and I had a familiarization class going through the so called Plug-in-Plan, which outlines what equipment is plugged into what electrical outlet on the Space Station and what are the restrictions and best practices for the crew to move stuff around, in the few cases in which we’re allowed to do that without guidance from the ground (computers, small battery chargers, portable lights, ..). It might sound strange to you that it’s such a big deal to plug something into a power supply, but Mission Control tracks the electrical load on each outlet, to make sure we don’t cause any trip and, consequently, the unplanned shutdown of equipment or science experiments. This morning our full Soyuz crew was reunited for a so-called Megacode class, in which we practice a correct rescue response in case a crewmate suddenly needs cardio-pulmonary (CPR) resuscitation. Starting chest compressions immediately and quickly getting a defibrillator set up might save a friend’s life. In addition, we’re also trained to insert an intraosseous device, basically a needle into the bone marrow, that provides a fast and reliable way to get life-saving medications into the blood stream. Starting CPR immediately dramatically increases the chances of survival of a person whose heart stops beating, on Earth as well on the Space Station. I hope you’re current on your CPR skills, you never know when you might be in the position of saving someone’s life! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa   ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

I’d like to add a fun episode from yesterday’s robotics class. As I mentioned, it was a track & capture class for me and Scott. Somewhat different than usual, though, because we used the ROBOT software environment, in my case the first time I was exposed to it. ROBOT is the system we use on the Space Station to practice capturing a vehicle in the days before a Cygnus, Dragon or HTV shows up on our doorstep. It consists of hand controllers, just like the ones of the real robotic workstation, and of three laptops, that reproduce all the command interfaces and all the camera views. As Scott and I were practicing capturing Cygnus, our instructor Megan noticed that, on the TV screen, the NASA-TV images were showing Swanni and Alex on ISS doing exactly the same: practicing for the upcoming Cygnus capture on ROBOT. Nice coincidence! On scheduled onboard practice sessions like these, instructors monitor from the ground, to provide real-time feedback. But crewmembers can also get extra practice on their own during their free time. Best of luck to the ISS crew for the upcoming Orb-2 Cygnus flight! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

Way to start a training week yesterday… after flying to Houston on Sunday, my Monday morning schedule took me to nearby Galvestion for a private screening of the IMAX movies Blue Planet and Hubble 3D. Sitting next to me in an empty theater, the people who made those movies, along with several other legendary IMAX productions from and about space: Toni Myers and James Neihouse. I still can hardly believe it, but I will help make the next IMAX movie from space! Together with other crewmembers of upcoming expeditions, I’ll do my best to make sure that the production team has the necessary footage to put together the next amazing movie experience of space for viewers all over the world. It doesn’t get much more exciting than that! Of course, it’s not free fun, we need to go through the necessary training to be able to operate the equipment. Even more important, we need to understand how scenes have to be shot to be suitable for projection on the giant IMAX screens. That’s why, even before being exposed to the dedicated still and video cameras we’ll use on ISS, I watched a couple of movies with Toni and James, who did their best to help me see them from the perspective of the person behind the camera. What was great? What could have been shot better? Looking forward to learning more from these experienced movie-makers. And I hope you’re as excited as I am about a new IMAX space movie coming out – although we’ll have to wait until 2016 to enjoy it! Picture: a scene from the IMAX 3D movie, shot in space from the Shuttle cargo bay during a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/

The last training event last week was a briefing on NightPod, a system that interfaces with the still cameras on ISS to help astronauts with night photography. As you probably know, taking pictures in low-light conditions requires longer exposure times. Even if the subject is not moving, it’s hard to get a sharp picture without the use of a tripod, since the little shaking of the hand is enough to introduce blurring. A fixed tripod, however, is of little use when you’re trying to photograph the Earth at night from the Space Station, because the target is moving fast in the field of view. You may try to rotate the camera to match the movement – and some people are quite skilled at that – but NightPod does it a lot better. The system is mounted on a bracket in the Cupola, so that the camera faces the big nadir window. After initialization, the software asks for inputs  regarding current altitude and attitude of the Space Station; based on that data it calculates the necessary rotation rate that needs to be imparted to the camera so that the target on the Earth surface looks stationary in its field of view. And there you go: you can have longer exposure times without compromising sharpness. This will be my last logbook for this week of vacation. As always, see you on the other side! Unless of course you’ll join us in Cremona, Northern Italy, this coming Saturday for this event with my friends of WeFly [Italian]: https://www.weflyteam.com/wefly/Evento_Cremona.html And if you want to know more about WeFly, check out this past logbook. #SamLogbook  #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/