Logbook | Outpost 42

L-43: Good to be back in Star City!

Saturday

18:07

Good to be back in Star City! It’s quite a bit cooler here than it was in Europe – and certainly in Houston – but it’s very pretty: the trees are showing off all the rich colors of the fall. It’s just lovely out here, tucked away from the frenzy of Moscow and its frenetic traffic. And I definitely love that the training facilities are just a few minutes away by bike from the Profilactorium, where we have our accommodations as ESA astronauts. I’ve only had two training days, but I’ve already had a chance to refresh all the skills that I will be tested on in the coming weeks, as part of our final certification: manual rendez-vous, manual docking and manual descent. Anton and I also started training for our complex full-day Soyuz exam (Terry will join us in another week). As per tradition, the first sim is pre-launch operations (what we do on the launch pad before start), ascent, injection into orbit and then… well, that depends on the good heart of our instructor. In our case, we had a leak – we were losing atmosphere into space – and so we had to come back with an emergency descent. That would be a very short flight! I do want to mention that between training in Houston and returning to Star City I had several days of training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne. That includes a final refresher of the Columbus systems, but also some additional training in the replacement of a Water-On-Off-Valve. There’s 10 of them in the Columbus thermal control system and one has been acting up recently, so it’s quite likely that I will be tasked to replace it – a spare is on orbit already. I’ve also had quite a bit of training on experiments, like the EML (= Electro-Magnetic Levitator. Cool name, ah?). It arrived to ISS last summer on ATV5 and Alex, who’s up there right now, has already started to install it, but it looks like he won’t have enough time to finish the job and I’ll take over. Here’s some more info about the EML: https://www.gizmag.com/msl-eml-iss/31042/ And of course EAC is also where we do Baseline Data Collection (BDC) for a number of human physiology experiments for ESA and ASI (the Italian Space Agency). So for example this week I had to sleep for two nights wearing a special shirt with integrated sensors for the experiment Wearable Monitoring. I talked about here. An ultrasound of the heart was also part of this BDC, but will not be performed on orbit. For some other experiments, however, we have to do an ultrasound in space as well. For this purpose, we always have an experienced ultrasound operator, who provides A remote guidance from the ground, and in training we practice together to make sure that we communicate efficiently. An example of a protocol requiring an ultrasound on orbit is the ASI experiment Drain Brain. In the picture you can see a training session at EAC last August – Manuela is the instructor for this experiment, the remove guider is actually in another room. 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 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/

11/10/2014

L-46: Rushed, rushed, rushed!

Wednesday

17:36

Rushed, rushed, rushed! Every single time I have left my apartment in the last three years to catch a train to the Frankfurt airport to head somewhere in the world for training, my luggage was ready when it was time to leave… and I mean exactly then, not a minute earlier. And every time I have prayed the astronaut guardian angel that I didn’t miss anything (or at least anything important) from my ever more inclusive packing checklist. Why should it have been different today? Maybe because I will see Cologne many times from space (cloud cover permitting) before I come back? Or because I have a one-way ticket to Russia in my pocket – well, on my smartphone? Or because I have a Kazakh visa in my passport? Or maybe because I have a lot of unique items in my carry-on luggage. Many little mementos that I will fly for family and close friends in my 1,5 kg personal allocation on the Soyuz, for example… not something I want to loose on the way to space (and back) and certainly not on the way to Moscow. But I’m also carrying my Soyuz IMAK. No, I don’t remember what the acronym stands for, sorry. But “Medical” and “Kit” is probably part of that. The IMAK is like your little travel medicine kit. There is a bigger one for each crewmember on ISS, but we carry a smaller one in the Soyuz – that’s a necessary precaution, especially if something went wrong with our six-hour launch-to-docking profile and we had to spend two days in the Soyuz instead before arriving to Station. And I’m also carrying my personal crew-worn-on kit. That’s a number of items that you sort of wear on yourself on your way to orbit: your kneeboard with pens and pencils (and their tethers), velcro strips, your portable stopwatch, your flashlight and yes… the emesis bag. That’s a fancy word for that bag that comes in handy if your last meal on Earth just doesn’t want to stay in your stomach… Anyway, here I am now. Boarding almost complete on my last commercial flight: landing in Moscow late tonight, ready to resume training in Star City early tomorrow. By the way, according to my mission paperwork, I’m not only heading to Low Earth Orbit (yuppie!), but I’m also heading to the Neutral Zone. Take a look! I sure hope those Romulans stay put. 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 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/

08/10/2014

L-115: Gas masks

Wednesday

11:39

As I have mentioned, yesterday Anton, Terry and I had a chance to repeat the fire evacuation simulation as part of our proficiency training as prime crew. I had talked about our first sim last December. One of the things that changed, for the better, since we did this in our backup flow, is that we now have an improved oxygen mask on the Russian segment. To understand how it got better, it’s useful to know how it actually works. Please refer to the picture. The Russian ИПК mask is a self-contained system, so no filtering involved here. The greenish container connected to the mask itself via a tube contains a substance that will chemically react with your exhaled breath to remove CO2 and add oxygen. When you are ready to put on the gas mask, you need to take a deep breath and hold it during donning. Then you exhale into the mask to get the reaction in the container started. The exhaled air goes through the chemically active substance into the bag, when you inhale you will pull that back into your lungs. You’ll know that somebody is breathing properly through the mask because you’ll see the bag inflating and collapsing with exhalations and inhalations. If you happen to squeeze the air out of the bag, you’ll not be able to take the next breath. Most likely you’ve pushed that air into the hood, so you need to lift the mask off your mouth, breath that air back in from the hood volume and exhale it back into the bag to get back to your normal cycle. The chemical reaction is exothermic, so the air gets quite warm. And here’s the big improvement since the previous model: there is a heat exchanger (the little metal element half way down the tube) that cools the air down to about 37°C, a lot cooler than it user to be. Impressive what a difference it made in our comfort level yesterday! The Russian mask is supposed to last between 20 and 140 min, a wide range that considers different people’s size and different activity levels. On average, it will last about 40 min. As a comparison, in the USOS segments we have masks that come with their own small oxygen tank. They’re are a lot quicker to don and more practical to wean and do work in, but you will run out of oxygen in about 7 min. If needed, you could connect them via a cable to the Station oxygen ports, although that does limit mobility. I’m wearing one of those masks in this picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/14526249749/in/set-72157637728544633 Picture: donning the Sokol suit while wearing the gas mask. Simulating contaminated atmosphere and evacuation of ISS due to ongoing fire. 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/

01/10/2014

L-61: Busy busy in Houston

Tuesday

18:09

Busy, busy, busy time here in Houston these weeks. It’s my last training trip at the Johnson Space Center – in fact, this is my very last week – and there is just so much to do! Only part of it is properly training – one last emergency simulation here, one last robotics session there, one last day of underwater training for spacewalks in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and one last session on the ground training model of the ARED, our workout machine for weightlessness. And so on. Another big chunk of the time is spent on Baseline Data Collection (BDC). As I’m writing this, I’m lying on a bed waiting for an MRI scan for the ESA experiment “Cartilage”, that looks at the effect of long duration spaceflight on, yes, the cartilage. It’ important to let the knee rest before the scan, hence my little 30-min downtime right now that allows me to write this logbook! By the way, I’m also carrying around a cooler for a 48-hour urine collection and later today I will put on the sensors for the 36-hours core temperature monitoring for another ESA experiment, “Circadian Rhythms”. Yes, you remember that one, the bandana days… Finally, there’s those events that really remind you that you’ll be flying to ISS very soon. Last week, for example, we had a handover class with Mike Hopking, from Expedition 37/38, who walked with us through the mockups of the Space Station pointing out all those little daily-life-in-space things that it’s hard to get from the instructors, just because they haven’t lived up there themselves. Where do you charge batteries? Where do you keep camera lenses and how do you manage cameras? Where is the “office space” setup and how is it organized? How about the hygiene corner? The best place to hang your workout clothes to dry? And how about questions like: how are my clothes packed? On what vehicle are they flying up? How will I find them? All that and more is part of the Crew Provisioning briefing. That’s how I know that most of my clothes, hygiene and some items I could include myself have just arrived to ISS this morning SpX-4. Hurrà! Somewhat related to that was our briefing on consumables: how are different types of consumable items managed, how is their usage tracked? We got to meet the specialists who will take care of that during our increment. And on a similar topic: what is the stowage and inventory situation onboard? Might not seem very interesting to you, but believe me, it’s very interesting to us. Imagine you were to go and live in a house that is overfilled with stuff, that you need to carefully track: you’ll probably want to hear a word or two about the current status! Oh, I’ll have to tell you a bit more about yesterday in the next days. I finally had my altitude run in the vacuum chamber. I talked about it here. The picture is from last July: as you might remember, back then the altitude run had to be aborted at the beginning of pre-breath because of a technical issue. Yesterday we successfully completed the four-hour pre-breath and the vacuum event. I’ll tell you more when I’ll have the pictures to share! In the meantime, more pictures from last summer are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157645822082702/ 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 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/

23/09/2014

L-70: Last spacewalk classes

Sunday

16:22

It’s been a week of many lasts. That’s the way it is when you are at L-70! On Friday I had my last 1G bref in preparation of – you guess it – my last NBL run next week. And on Thursday I had my last SAFER class. You can read some more about SAFER training here. But actually this last class was a bit different because we tried the virtual reality setup that we have on ISS, which is used to practice SAFER rescue scenarios, but also to review a timeline in 3D before performing it on a spacewalk. Here’s a picture of how it looks like! https://twitter.com/vr_doug/status/510099878135865344/photo/1 And on Wednesday Terry and I had our last full-day Prep & Post class, reviewing the airlock operations conducted before and after a spacewalk. Believe it or not, it’s been almost three years since my first Prep & Post class: I have pictures from that event dated October 2011. At that time I wasn’t assigned to an ISS expedition, but I was training as though I was, having been designated ESA’s reserve astronaut. Regan, our Exp 42 lead EVA systems instructor, actually taught me that class back in 2011: I can safely say he’s taught me all I know about the EMU suit and the airlock operations. Normally in a Prep & Post class we would pressurize the suits and devote some serious training time to the pre-breath protocols. I have explained a bit about that in this previous logbooks: L-470: Before EVA, L-390: Rehearsing pre- and post-EVA On this last class, however, we did not pressurize and we focused instead on a thorough review of all the procedures. But the main goal was to make the most of a few hours in which we had a special guests, our Soyuz commander Anton. In the past, when we had only three people on ISS, cosmonauts were fully trained on the EMU and non-Russians were fully trained on the Orlan. After we started having 6 crewmembers onboard – three Russians and three non-Russians – the ISS moved to separate operations, in order to optimize training time, so everybody gets training only in “their” suit and spacewalk procedures. As ESA astronauts we are a bit of an exception, in that most of us (including me) are qualified both on the EMU and on the Orlan. As you probably know if you’ve been following this logbook, suiting somebody up in the EMU is not such an easy task and having two extra hands to help is definitely desirable. Having Anton get hands-on on the EMU last week, helping in the suit-up process, will definitely pay off if he needs to help us on orbit! Our second special guest was NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, who gave us a lot of valuable tips based on her experience of actually running airlock operations on ISS just last year. 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 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/

14/09/2014

L-75: flying to space soon!

Tuesday

18:07

This week has started with a lot of events that really drive home the point that we are flying to space soon!

How about a meeting with the ISS program management yesterday? Or a four-hour brief with the flight control team on the current state of the ISS systems? Or being given our official “crew notebooks”, certified to fly to ISS? Or having my pre-flight on camera interview this morning?

And talking about lasts, I’m also carrying around a cooler for my final 48-hours urine collection… definitely one of the least glamorous and pleasant aspects of astronaut training!

Hey, today is also a big anniversary for our crew: exactly two years ago we started our NOLS expedition in Alaska. That’s when Butch, Terry and I first got to really know each other. Kimiya and Kjell, who shared that adventure with us, are now our backup crew. Hal is now the Exp 43 lead CAPCOM, while Thomas is still our Exp42 Lead Flight Director!

I shared a little bit of that story here:

https://blogs.esa.int/astronauts/2012/10/08/all-i-need-to-know-to-fly-to-space-i-learned-in-alaska/

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 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/

09/09/2014

L-79: 2.600 failure

Friday

22:32

First of all, I apologize for the long silence. I never meant to have such a long break in the logbook, but things have happened on the private side of life that just took priority. So, now I am back, working at full speed to a launch date that is now, wow, only 79 days away! Since my last logbook I have had brief trips to Japan and to Europe that included some refreshers on the JEM and Columbus systems respectively, but mostly training on the JAXA and ESA experiments that I will perform during my stay on ISS. I’ll try to catch up on that in some upcoming logbook. Now ‘m back in Houston for my final few weeks of training at the Johnson Space Center. As usual, training here is extremely varied: yesterday was my first day and I had a phlebotomy class, a few brief classes on the experiments Body Measures and Salivary Markers, a consultation class on the Environmental Control System, a proficiency class on the onboard application we use to locate a hidden fire and a couple of IMAX classes, including a trip to the Galveston IMAX theatre to watch footage that I recorded with Terry back in July. Today, Terry and I said our final goodbye to procedure 2.600, at least in terms of training. And I certainly hope we will not use it on orbit, though you never know! The infamous 2.600 is the “Unknown EPS bus failure” procedure, with EPS being the Electrical Power System. It’s meant to cover a major power loss, which could potentially affect communication with the ground: that could happen because the communication systems loose power or because we loose ISS attitude control or simply pointing data (so the antennas don’t know where to find the communication satellites). Or a combination of all those things. Moreover, with a major power bus loss we could partially loose internal and/or external cooling, which would put us on a so-called thermal clock: within a few hours, some components would start to overheat. As you might imagine, the ISS has a lot of self-protection features: they are called FDIR (Fault Detection Isolation and Recovery). The problem when you have a major power bus loss, like we had today in our scenario, is that you might loose power to the computers that are responsible for the FDIR response: for example the computer that would normally recover communication to a backup string. Slowly but certainly, the ISS main computers, the ones at the top of the hierarchy, will bring online backup units for all the lower level computers, according to a predetermined priority sequence. But full recovery might actually take a full hour and crew intervention is still required to make sure that the Station is brought to a safe configuration, especially in terms of cooling. In our scenario today the very first priority was to recover attitude control by putting the Russian GNC computers in charge (GNC = Guidance, Navigation and Control, which includes keeping the ISS in the proper orientation). As soon as the Russian computers gain attitude control, they immediately fire the thrusters to bring the ISS back to its nominal attitude along the local vertical and the velocity vector. You may wonder why that transition to Russian control doesn’t happen automatically in case of loss of attitude. Well, the problem lies with the solar arrays: they track the Sun and they could be oriented in such a way that thruster firing might damage them. So we first need to bring the solar arrays to a fixed, safe position: one of the things that 2.600 will guide you to do! 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 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/

05/09/2014

L-100: 100 days to launch!

Friday

12:34

100 days to launch! Yes, I know… yesterday’s logbook was L-102: what’s going on? No, the launch date has not changed, it’s still on November 24th. But at 1:57am Baikonur local time! That means that it will be the evening of November 23rd in Europe, which is home to me, my family and a great part of my friends. It will be early afternoon in the US and late evening in Moscow. And it will even be November 23rd on the Space Station, which operates on GMT. Even more importantly, when we will get up in the morning (late morning) of November 23rd, it will effectively be launch day! Our last night on Earth for six months will be behind us and we’ll only go back to sleep for a short nap in the afternoon, before embarking on our great adventure. Considering all that, I decided that today is L-100! Can’t wait to go back to Baikonur and get ready to fly to space. The team down there is already working on our Soyuz ship: you can see a lot of them in the picture, taken a few minutes after the Exp 40 crew (Max, Reid and Alex) had waved us good bye from launch pad stairs last May. Next time we will not be in the picture. Or maybe we will, if they will include the top of the rocket! More picture from our backup-crew time in Baikonur are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157644330297400/ 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 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/

15/08/2014

L-102: Soyuz sim leaks, engine and computer failures

Thursday

17:08

Back in the Soyuz sim today with Terry and Anton, this time wearing the Sokol and set to practice an emergency descent after undocking. These scenarios are always very intense but, on the other hand, somewhat shorter than a normal descent, because we rush to make an early opportunity to turn on the engine for a braking burn, about 40 min after opening the hooks to undock from ISS. Today we started out with a leak in the Soyuz, to which we added a second failure that, in itself, would lead to an emergency descent: a depressurization of the high-pressure helium lines. There are no pumps in the Soyuz propulsion system: it’s a simple and robust design that uses high-pressure helium to pressurize the propellant tanks. If the helium starts leaking, we need to turn on the engine before the pressure becomes to low for the deorbit burn. So, with a leaking descent module and leaking helium tanks, we were all set for a ballistic reentry using Program 5, which I have explained in this previous logbook. Except that Dima, our evil instructor, also threw a main computer failure at us, so we had to revert to flying our ballistic reentry in the so-called “analog loop” – it’s the older computer from the previous Soyuz series, which leaves a lot of work up to the crew and has a lot less built-in automatic checks. Main thing: you need to build the attitude and turn on the engine manually and, if the engine fails, you need to manually shut it down and turn on the backup thrusters. We had an engine failure so early on in the burn today that we burned on the backup thruster for over half an hour (instead of the nominal 3 min and 41 seconds) and we ended separating from the service module by thermal sensors, instead of by command… how that works, is a story for another logbook! 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 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/

14/08/2014

L-103: Spinning Soyuz

Wednesday

18:01

It’s a beautiful summer week here in Star City and Terry, Anton and I are keeping up our proficiency in all thing Soyuz. I’ve had training sessions in manual approach, manual docking and manual descent and today we were all three back together in the Soyuz simulator. We flew a rendezvous and docking profile, the first time as part of a nominal flight, which takes 6 hours (4 orbits) from launch to docking. The second time we simulated having transitioned to the old two-day flight profile because of some malfunction. If you’re wondering what we would be doing for two days, waiting to rendezvous with Station… well, I’m not sure how we would decide to kill the time, but one thing is certain: most of the time we would be spinning! In fact, when there are no dynamic operations (i.e.: there’s no need to fire the thrusters or the main engine), the Soyuz is put in gyroscopic stabilization with the solar panels pointed at the Sun to maximize power generation. It’s actually not the greatest thing for the crew: any space sickness you’re experiencing, the spinning is guaranteed to make it worse (or to give you symptoms, if you didn’t have any). But unless you actively stabilize the attitude with thrusters, the only way to keep a stable orientation is to rotate on an axis. Btw, I’ve explained this a little bit more in this post from – wow! – almost three years ago (I have been studying the Soyuz for a while, haven’t I?) In the picture you can see the periscope view in the simulator as we were approaching the ISS. Looks like we were at a distance of about 200-250 meters: at that point we would be doing the fly-around to align ourselves with the docking port. The computer is still flying the approach, but the hand controllers are in the working positions (they’re pulled out before approach start), so that Anton can reach them if it’s necessary to transition to manual control. 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 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/

13/08/2014

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