→ Logbook

Yesterday was quite an epic day on ISS, thanks to Butch and Terry: one day earlier than originally planned, they successfully completed a multi-day, extremely complex maintenance task on one of our two CDRAs – the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly. With plenty of support from the ground specialists and great concentration and attention to detail from their side, they got our Node 3 CDRA back in shape so that we’re back to full redundancy. CDRA is a vital component for our survival on ISS: on spaceship Earth plants take care of “scrubbing” the CO2 we exhale from our atmosphere – on spaceship ISS we need the CDRA. From my side, I got to do the first run of the ESA experiment Skin-B: with three different instruments, I took a series of measurement on a specific location on my forearm (the same we used for pre-flight data collection). First I used an instrument call Tewameter, which measures the evaporation of water from the skin surface: this is an indicator of water loss across the skin, which in turn indicates how good the barrier function of the skin is. A second instrument, called corneometer, measures the moisture level. And finally, by using a small handheld UV camera I could take a very detailed picture of the surface of my skin. While science is the purpose of use being up here, we need of course to take care of our ship and make sure we can live up there as human beings. As you can imagine, a well functioning toilet is certainly part of that. Yesterday for the first time I got to access the bowels of our beloved space toilet for a relatively simple routine operation: refilling the flush water tank. Of course, we don’t really have a toilet bowl to flush, but at the beginning of every use, when we turn on the fan to create the necessary suction, a certain quantity of a pre-treat chemical, diluted with some water from the flush water tank, goes through the piping – it takes a few seconds, a light goes out and the toilet is ready for “Number 1”. Once in a while, that flush water needs refilling. Normally, we only need to reconfigure the valves to let water flow into the tanks, but this has been shown to cause some overpressure which has triggered fault lights in the past. Therefore we now have a temporary setup to provide pressure relief during refill, as you can see in the picture. Something people often wonder about is: how it smells on the Space Station. I was actually very curious myself, because I had heard conflicting reports. To be honest, I can’t recognize any particular odor – it seems pretty neutral to me, the filters do a great job. Only our Soyuz has a distinct smell, not sure of what, but it’s very dear to me: whenever I float in there, it brings me instantly back to launch day! Now, if you’re working close to a solid waste container, like I was yesterday for the toilet work, you’ll smell something. Similarly, you’ll smell something wherever we accumulate trash, be it in PMM for temporary stowage or ATV in preparation of destructive reentry. But in general, no unpleasant smell onboard! Or maybe I just got used to it already? Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int * #SamLogbook *   * #Futura42 * (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora

My second week on ISS has started and it’s time to start collecting samples for a couple of human physiology experiments: Microbiome and salivary markers.

This morning, as I woke up and opened up my schedule on the laptop (conveniently located 10 cm from my nose in my sleeping unit), I have found a friendly reminder inserted right after wake-up time: no eating, drinking of brushing teeth before collecting the saliva samples! I had already had a short activity yesterday: to go and gather all the necessary equipment, which I had then stowed in my crew quarters, so I had everything ready to take three samples, a collection that I will repeat daily for the next seven days. A second short activity on my timeline contained the location where I had to store the saliva samples. Simply put, they go into the freezer within 30 minutes from collection, but where exactly? We have three MELFI freezers onboard, each has four drawers, each drawer has four sections and each section has multiple stowage boxes. Since it’s a freezer and it takes a lot of energy to keep it cooled, whenever we open the door we don’t want it open for longer than 60 seconds. It’s worth taking the time to be really sure of the location the samples go to. That’s especially crucial for retrieval, of course, when you need to quickly locate what you need to transfer out of MELFI  and likely into a cold bag for transportation back to Earth. Tomorrow morning, by the way, I will also have a blood draw. Since it’s my first one, one of our medical trainers will be on console in Houston,  ready to assist and answer any questions. My physical trainers were also on the ground ready to give feedback today for my supervised exercise session on the ARED: that’s when you setup a camera and the trainers can watch real-time your exercise form and give you suggestions. The proprioception in space is quite different and you might be doing your exercises with poor form without realizing it, leading to reduced effectiveness or even injury. ARED sure takes some getting used to: for example, when you do a squat, not only you move the bar “up”, but you actually push “down” the platform that your feet are standing on. And the entire machine is free to move on three axes (that’s how avoid inputting loads onto structure): the first couple of times I did squats I had the feeling, after every repetition, that the machine was forcing me to fall forward. Anyway, however hard your workout was, when you get to benchpress or crunches and you’re laying with your back to the platform, one thing is sure: you have the best view a gym every had. You’re facing straight down into the Cupola and through the windows onto the planet! Among the many other activities of the past two days, I had one that was particularly fun: I had to remove a connector in a hard-to-access location on the Lab endcone and for that I had to lower the Lab forward hatch. That’s quite a big deal, by the way: we always keep the hatches open, for safety reasons. In this case, even if I did not latch the hatch, but only lowered it, we had to make sure that everybody was in the Lab or aft of it, meaning that nobody was cut off from our escape vehicle (our Soyuz) in the unlikely event that for some reason the hatch got stuck in the lowered position. In the picture you can see the hatch lowered, as I fly up to reach the connector. Also, on the right side, you can see one of the MELFI freezers with its four circular drawers.

First weekend in space is over, time to get ready for our first full week of work on the Space Station. But how has it been up here in these last two days? Well, for one thing, more private, since the onboard cameras are not set to download live video on the weekend. Also, very quiet, to the point of feeling strange: calls from the ground are very rare and typically contain only brief communications, for example notifying a crewmember that a Space-To-Ground channel has been privatized for a private conference with the flight surgeon or with the family. I had both this weekend, but only because I have recently arrived on Station and facetime with the flight surgeon is scheduled more often. In the future, except in case of medical issues, we will only talk once a week on a workday. The private family conference, on the other hand, is a weekly event that is typically on the weekend. With the webcam, you can show your family the Space Station or even a view from the Cupola! Saturday is also cleaning day. Our ISS Commander, Butch, assigned us to the different non-Russian modules: he took care of Node 3 and PMM. Terry cleaned Node 1, Airlock and Lab and I devoted my labor to Node 2, Columbus and JEM. Granted, I had the easiest task, since the toughest modules to clean are certainly Node 3 (where we have the toilet and the exercise equipment) and Node 1 (where we eat). But we’ll rotate in the next weeks, so we’ll all get our share of fun. To clean we use the vacuum cleaner on all the ventilation grids: especially the return grids get pretty dirty, because all the little debris that floats in the cabin eventually gets taken by the airflow to a return grid or another. It’s very important to keep the grids clean to ensure proper airflow throughout the Station. Carbon dioxide scrubbing and oxygen introduction only occur in certain places and proper circulation ensures that we have everywhere a good atmosphere to breath. After vacuum cleaning, we use disinfectant wipes to clean the surfaces of most frequent use: the handrails, the handheld microphones, the computers. And we take the opportunity for a general check, for example ensuring that no ventilation outlets or inlets are blocked by something stowed too close in front of them. In the picture, I’m vacuum cleaning our crew quarters in Node 2. That is my own, in the deck location. Butch and Terry live in the port and starboard locations and Sasha lives on the ceiling crew quarter. Anton and Elena have their sleeping stations in the Russian Service Module. Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int * #SamLogbook *      * #Futura42 * (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa  ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora

Yesterday Terry and I had one more day (I assume the last one) with a lighter work schedule that included time for orientation and for handover with Butch. Still, I got to do a lot of different activities both on the payload side (that’s a fancy name for science) and on the systems side (that’s another fancy name for maintenance work on the Space Station itself).

On the science side, I performed an ultrasound session for the Italian Space Agency experiment Drain Brain. The specific hardware of this experiment was lost on the Orbital mishap, but a replacement hardware will be on its way soon on the SpX-5 cargo mission. In the meantime, we could get the science started with the standard ultrasound equipment of the Space Station. Of course, I’m not able to do an ultrasound on my own: a private audio channel was set up with the Principal Investigator on the ground, who provided remote guidance based on real-time data from the ultrasound machine. He could also see a live video downlink of me performing the operations. Things went pretty smoothly, especially thanks to the fact that in the morning I had assisted Butch in performing his ultrasound (a more complex one, requiring two people) for the experiment Cardio-Ox. Butch had introduced me to a great trick of space ultrasound: no need to use a messy gel on the ultrasound probe, you can just use water! Yesterday I also got to do my first systems maintenance, replacing one of the many components of our Water Recovery System: that’s the equipment that produces our potable water from (already pre-processed) urine and from the condensate (the water recovered from the cabin air, for example from our sweat or from our breath). I’m also happy to report that I had a chance to work in our European cargo vehicle, the ATV5. Nothing very complex, in truth: I got to introduce some gas from the ATV tanks into the Station atmosphere, increasing our onboard pressure by 7 mm of mercury. I was also scheduled to do a visual inspection of our T2 treadmill, in particular of the elements that make up its vibration isolation system. As you can imagine, we don’t want to impart big loads on the structure of the Station when we run: on the one hand, to preserve the lifetime of the ISS; on the other hand, it would be hard to make microgravity science if the Station was shaking while we are running! Good news, our vibration isolation system is in great shape! Still, some activities require that there be no running on T2. Just yesterday, we had quite a few hours on “No T2” on the crew constraints band of our electronic schedule. That’s because JAXA was moving the Japanese robotic arm for the deployment of the Spinsat satellite, which happened successfully. In the picture, you can see part of the SpinSat when it was still on the slide table of the Japanese airlock (looks like a metal sphere). At that time, the Japanese robotic arm was about to move in to grab the satellite with its deployer and we took a peak from the JEM windows.

Yesterday Terry, Butch and I had a day off to celebrate the US holiday Thanksgiving. I like the thought of having a day specifically dedicated to gratitude and the things we’re thankful for: from my side, I was really happy about a day off! I did have to do some work, mainly in support of our Russian colleagues Sasha and Elena working in Columbus on the assembly of the experiment Plasma Kristall 4, but most of the day I could use to get my space life a bit more organized and to get started on using the exercise machines. My biggest achievement has been organizing my little sleeping station: it’s about the size of an old telephone booth and it contains of course my sleeping bag, which I typically roll up and stow out of the way during the day. My two personal laptop computers also live in my sleeping station and a footrail is convenient located on the floor to provide anchoring while working on the laptops. One is called SSC and I can use it to look at the schedule, to use my onboard email, to read procedures, to download pictures and videos to the ground, to search the inventory management system and much more  – it’s connected to the onboard network, so I can even access it from my iPad (which also lives in my sleeping station). The second computer is completely disconnected from the onboard network and can be used to remotely login to an image on a server in Houston: it’s our way of connecting to the internet. I also keep in my sleeping station the clothes I am currently using, a few hygiene items like deodorant, handcream and chapstick, a water bag with straw that I can refill at the water dispenser in the nearby module, my crew notebook. How do I secure all this? Well, like everywhere else on Station: with Velcro, bungees and clips (with Velcro on them). Luckily, many people have lived here before me (the last one, my fellow Shenanigan Alex!), so all that is needed for a 5-star space accommodation is already set up. Ah, my camera with flash is in here too. For internal photos, we try to use “our own”  camera as much as possible: it makes it easier to track photos and download them. It’s not only about taking pictures of our life and work onboard: very often the ground will ask that we photo-document a piece of equipment or an activity. As I said, I also had my first workout yesterday, first of CEVIS, our ergometer, and then on ARED, the Advanced Resistive Exercise Devise, on which we can perform a number of exercises, from squats to bench presses. Butch gave us a great briefing about the peculiarities of these machines, especially ARED: if we don’t treat it right, it will break on us, which we really don’t want. We need exercise to preserve our muscles and bones! The picture was taken by Butch from the Cupola. One of this days I will take a camera and show you the view from the other side. Certainly the best view from an exercise machine, on and off the planet! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook     #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST  qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa  ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora

Here I am, wrapping up my first “regular” day on the International Space Station! In a way, it feels like I arrived here a long time ago: when you discover new things every minute and your mind is absorbing so many experiences and information, it feels like time expands. It’ s hard to believe that we only arrived yesterday morning, launch feels already so far away. On the other hand, every time I bump into something because of my beginner’s flying skills, or every time I need to ask Butch a question (which is every few minutes), I am reminded that I have only just arrived and I have so much to learn! Butch, of course, is our veteran crewmember on the non-Russian side of the Station, he’s been up here since September. And, thankfully, he is the paragon of patience. He made it clear from the start that the number 1 rule is: don’t hesitate to ask a question, even if you know you’re asking it for the 15th time! I’m thankful that I have had the luxury of a rather light schedule for this first day. Mostly, I have done preparation work for upcoming experiments. Later this week Sasha, Elena and I will install the experiment Plasma Kristall 4 (PK4) in Columbus, and for that I had to do some cleanup and stowage reconfiguration. In itself an easy task, but quite challenging when you just got to space and you’re not yet in perfect control of your body, let alone of five big bags you have to somehow manage while accessing a particular locker. Finding a particular item in a bag, then, can also be challenging, if that bag is also full of other small items you’re not interested in, but who simply refuse to stay inside. In addition to the PK4-related tasks, I was also scheduled to do preparation work for the Italian Space Agency Experiment “ Blind & Imagined”: I gathered all the necessary equipment and temp-stowed in the Japanese Laboratory JEM, where the experiment will take place, and I routed some cables. I also got to do some self-study (we call it onboard training) to operate the 3D printer demonstrator that is onboard; since this study session was on my schedule, I expect I will get to work with the 3D printer soon! As for flying: it’s a lot of fun, but not so easy! Especially the US Lab (Destiny) is challenging, because the rack fronts are full of equipments that a clumsy flyer like me could potentially damage. But hey, this evening I already felt a lot more confident than this morning, so hopefully soon I’ll be a proficient flyer. One thing it’s sure: it’s a great feeling! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook   #Futura42 * (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora

(Written November 27th)

With some delay, a few words about my day yesterday on humanity’s outpost in space!

Most of my day’s activities were dedicated to the Italian Space Agency experiment “Blind and Imagined”.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/127.html

I’ll confess, not the easiest experimental setup, especially for the ISS visitor with the least space time ever (that would be me, at least for a few more days – hey, you have to find your records where you can!).

 “Blind and Imagined” takes place in the Japanese Laboratory JEM and requires setting up a set of four cameras called Elite, which monitor a specific volume in the module. Inside that volume, the subject performs a series of movements and the motion in three dimensions is tracked precisely by the Elite cameras, thanks to a series of reflective markers attached to the subject’s body: its’ basically little spheres, the size of a marble, with special optical properties. They clip on an adhesive strip and can therefore be applied on the skin: I had to put a number on them on the right side of my body, from the ankle to the forehead, including quite a few on the hand for the second part of the protocol, in which I had to imagine throwing a ball to a target with different force levels. In the first one, instead, I had to reach for a target in front of me, bending at the hips and the ankles, sometime with open eyes, sometimes with closed eyes.

The experiment is aimed at studying sensory-motion adaptation in space. How does your brain adapt its strategy of controlling movement and balance in this very alien condition of weightlessness?

Any understanding we gain into the functioning of the brain could help us in time in treating people with neurological disorders or injuries.

Well, the “Blind and Imagined”  investigators will draw their rigorous conclusions from the data, but I certainly have fun just observing  the tricks my brain plays on me. For example, when I find myself moving along, say, the ceiling, my brain thinks that that’s the floor, so when I have to turn into a side module I’m constantly tempted to make a wrong turn because my brain expects it to be on the opposite side. Or sometimes I have to make a conscious effort for a second or two to figure out where I am: is it the floor, the ceiling, a wall?
I’m sure it will all become quicker with time, or at least Butch says so.

Also, yesterday I had some great rehydrated asparagus, so far my favorite rehydrated veggie from Self-Service Restaurant Node 1!

Wow, wow, wow! It’s 22:00 here on the International Space Station (we’re on GMT time), I’m approaching the end of my first day in space and I cannot even begin to describe the experience of the past 30 hours or so. Really, I don’t know.

Saying good bye to my family, suiting up for launch, getting to the launch pad, riding up the elevator, strapping in… and then the launch, this wild ride to orbit and then an abrupt engine cutoff and feeling my body wanting to float off my seat. And the first glimpses of Earth: my first sunrise, the stars. My first sight of the ISS as we approached (more to that later) and then floating through the hatch into the warm embraces of Sasha, Elena and Butch.

The first clumsy attempts at “flying” , having our first meal, Butch giving us the toilet brief, Terry calling me to watch a sunrise from the Cupola.. and so many more impressions. It will take my brain days to process it all and I promise I will share as much as I can!

For now, I will tell you of one moment, which was so fortunate and unexpected. You know, when you fly to the Space Station in the Soyuz, unless you are the Commander sitting in the center seat, you can only see your destination from far away in the black and white camera view (the same image that is transmitted to Mission Control and usually shown during media coverage of docking). As a left-or right seater, you only have a side view and there’s no way to see the Station until you’re really close and parts of it start coming in your field of you. Before the flight, previous Soyuz fliers had reminded me to start looking for the Space Station in the side window in the last part of the approach and so I did: but I wasn’t prepared in the least for what I saw when we were at about 30-40 meters.

I had released my shoulder straps quite a bit at that point, so I was floating over my seat. As I turned to look outside, at first I looked back and saw one of our Soyuz solar panels, which I had seen before of course. Then my eyes caught something in the peripheral view. And as I slowly turned my gaze and when I realized what I was seeing, I was overcome by pure amazement and joy:  the Space Station was there, but not just any view. The huge solar panels were flooded in a blaze of orange light, vivid, warm almost alien. I couldn’t help exclaiming something aloud, which you can probably hear in the recordings of our docking, since at that point we were “hot mic”  with Mission Control. Anton reminded me of that and so I tried to contain my amazement and return to the docking monitoring. When I peaked again later, the orange glow was gone. 

Butch told me later that he had heard my amazement on com when  “the Station had turned orange.”  I didn’t know, but apparently there’s only a few seconds during day-night transition that the Station is lit by that amazing orange glow. And it happened to be exactly when I peaked outside!  I feel very fortunate that I had such a unique first glimpse of our human outpost in space: such a great welcome!

Which was only trumped, by the way, by the amazing welcome our veteran crewmates Sasha, Elena and Butch prepared for us!

Immediately after our arrival they took us to the Service Module to say hello to our friends and relatives in Baikonur and as soon as we have a few minutes break in the cm coverage they started to “ set the table”  with all the food they had already warmed for us!

Well, I told you that it might not be my last pre-launch logbook yesterday. I woke up a bit earlier from the planned 5-hour nap and there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep, so here I am, sharing a few departing thought. The doctors will show up in about 40 min to start a series of hygiene operations: before going to space I’ll be as clean as I’ll ever be, outside and inside (if you get the message, I’m not going into any details here).

I’ve picked up my computer and come back to bed. My last time in a bed for many months. Who knows if my body will miss it or will like sleeping in weightlessness. The nap has been weird: part of my brain was dreaming, part of it was awake watching myself dream. But that’s how the past few days have been: part of me was living all the events, meetings, traditions of the past days, and part of me was almost watching a movie unfolding. Now almost everything is done. My bags are neatly packed and will be taken to their final destination by my family, the backup crew and the ever helpful ESA support personnel. Hopefully, it’s all properly organized: part of the luggage will go into my landing bags, one for the nominal landing site and one for the ballistic site. Part will go home to Cologne, part will eventually find its way to Houston for my return. Email is set up with out-ouf-office replies: kind of cool to be able to write “Sorry, I’m off the planet for a while”. Many friends have made it all the way to Baikonur (you guys rock!): we’ve had a chance to spend some time together, albeit in the somewhat awkward condition of having to talk through a glass wall. I could have direct contact with my closer family, who have been medically monitored. All will be waving us goodbye in a few hours as we exit the building to board the buses to the cosmodrome. In a day like this (well, will there ever be another day like this?) I feel that the most important thing is to say thank you: I’ve had many occasions to thank publicly the organizations that have made this spaceflight possible for me. But now I would like to say a more personal thanks to my family, my friends, my teachers, my colleagues, all the many people who have helped me arrive to this day, by supporting me or by challenging me, by teaching me something or simply by being there for me. I go to space with all of myself, with everything that I am and I have experience, and I certainly take with me every person I have met. I’d like to share a picture that our backup, Oleg Kononenko, took on Friday as our rocket was raised on the launchpad. I can almost see my seat up there at the top! Don’t forget to play our #LaunchPadPlaylist along with us tonight around 30-40 min before launch. https://open.spotify.com/user/astrosamantha/playlist/4lCptzXoF7j8DnfRDxdmTr All the best, and talk to you from space!