Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

9

June 21, 2015

BEING ALONE in the U.S. segment, I can go all day without seeing another person, unless I have reason to visit my Russian colleagues. The chatter of my crewmates is suddenly gone, and with it the chatter between each of them and the ground. I appreciate the quiet and the privacy, a rare luxury up here. I can blast music or enjoy uninterrupted silence. I keep CNN on all day, at least when the satellites are lined up, to keep me company.

I do sometimes miss having another person to talk to, even if it’s just to complain about the challenging work schedule or to talk about what’s on the news. On a more practical level, I often miss being able to get a bit of help now and then. Many of the tasks on my schedule are doable by one person but would be much easier with another pair of hands at key moments. My workdays are longer when I do everything alone. The cosmonauts would drop everything to help if I needed them to, but they have their own work, and the delicate exchange of labor, resources, and money between our two space agencies is complex. I don’t want to complicate it further by asking for free help.

Today is Gennady’s birthday, and we have a special dinner in his honor. I give him the gift I remembered to pack: a ball cap with embroidered U.S. Navy pilot’s wings. Today is also Father’s Day, so we wind up talking about our children. Gennady has three daughters—two now grown and a twelve-year-old like Charlotte, along with a granddaughter close in age to his youngest daughter. He says he has regrets about missing his daughters’ childhoods because he was so focused on his career. He says he’s a much different father now than when they were younger. We both say we are looking forward to spending more time with our kids when we get back.

After we say our good nights and I go back to my CQ, I find an email from my ex-wife Leslie, which is unusual. She generally doesn’t deal with me directly. She wanted to let me know that she had heard from Charlotte’s teacher. A few days ago, Charlotte’s class was playing a game, and she was first to choose her teammate. Charlotte could easily have chosen one of her friends, but instead she chose a classmate who is developmentally challenged and has never been chosen first for anything. The teacher was so touched, she created a special award for Charlotte for always doing the right thing. Leslie’s email makes me feel both closer to Earth and farther away at the same time. It nearly brings a tear to my eye.

I WAKE UP early in the morning, six a.m., and float out of my CQ, through the lab and Node 1, turning on lights as I go. I turn right, into Node 3, where I go into the WHC. I don’t start it up, though—today is a science sample collection day. The process of urination is going to be even more complicated than usual. I grab a urine collection bag, clear plastic with a condom attached to one end. I put the condom on, then wrap it in mesh bandages to prevent leaks. As I urinate, I have to push with enough force to unseat the valve on the bag to allow the urine to flow in—without the valve there, of course, it would just come floating back out. But it’s hard to push with enough force to open the valve without pushing so hard the urine leaks from the condom—and this is exactly what happens. Urine soaks the gauze, then quickly forms droplets that float out to the walls. I’ll have to clean them up later. After I finish peeing, I remove the condom while trying not to liberate more urine. I use sample tubes with plungers to draw out three samples, initial them, mark them with the date and time, and scan their barcodes into the system. Then I head down to the Japanese module to put the tubes into one of the freezers. I will go through this process again and again, every time I urinate for the next twenty-four hours.

With the pee sample done, I head into Columbus for my blood draw. Like most astronauts on ISS, I know how to draw my own blood. At first I told the instructors in Houston that I wouldn’t be able to stick a needle in my own vein, but with some help I agreed to give it a try and quickly got the hang of it. Gennady joins me in Columbus to help, right on time, though I told him last night he didn’t need to. I clean the site on my right arm, which I’ve found to be a better vein. Using my left hand, I pierce the skin and slip the needle in. There is a brief flash of red in the tube holder, an indication that I hit the vein, but when I connect the vacuum tube, there’s no blood. I must have gone right through. Having ruined that one for today, I will have to try again on the left side. Because this is my only remaining arm, I suggest Gennady give it a try for me.

Gennady grabs another butterfly needle and connects it to the tube holder. After cleaning the site on my left arm, he takes aim and slides the needle perfectly into the vein. But the needle isn’t properly connected to the tube holder, so blood escapes, flowing out into globs in the air that wobble and then resolve themselves into crimson spheres, traveling out in every direction. Gennady quickly reseats the connection while I reach out to grab some of the blood spheres with my hand before they can float farther away. The ones I missed I’ll have to track down and clean up later. Luckily, I’m mostly alone on the U.S. segment, so no one will encounter a gory surprise before I can get to it.

Gennady changes out the tubes over and over until he’s drawn ten tubes of blood. I thank him for his help, and he goes back to the service module to have breakfast. I put the tubes in the centrifuge for half an hour, then put them in the freezer along with the other samples.

Later in the day, I will take a fecal sample; tomorrow, saliva and skin. I will go through this whole process every few weeks for the rest of the year.

Within the past week I’ve developed a badly infected ingrown toenail on my left big toe. Almost every moment of the day, unless I’m sleeping, I have one or both feet hooked around a handrail to hold me steady, so big toes are extremely important. I can’t afford for this guy to be out of commission. I’m treating it with topical antibiotics—we have a full pharmacy up here—and monitoring it closely.

The CO₂ is much better now that I’m the only one exhaling on this side of the ISS. My headaches and congestion have largely cleared up, and I notice a difference in my mood and cognition. I’m appreciating this break from the symptoms while I can. At the same time, I’m concerned because the ground will probably act as though there is no problem now. Then the next crew will get here and we will start the whole cycle all over again.

One of the nice things about living in space is that exercise is part of your job, not something you have to fit in before or after work. (Of course, that’s also one of the bad things about it: there are no excuses.) If I don’t exercise six days a week for at least a couple of hours a day, my bones will lose significant mass—1 percent each month. We’ve had two astronauts break their hips after long-duration spaceflights, and since the risk of death after hip fracture increases with age, bone loss is one of the biggest dangers my year in space will pose to my future health. Even with all this exercise, I will lose some bone mass, and it’s suspected that bone structure changes permanently after long-term spaceflight (this is one of the many medical questions Misha’s and my year will help to answer). Our bodies are smart about getting rid of what’s not needed, and my body has started to notice that my bones are not needed in zero gravity. Not having to support our weight, we lose muscle as well. Sometimes I reflect that future generations may live their whole lives in space, and they won’t need their bones at all. They will be able to live as invertebrates. But I plan to return to Earth, so I must work out six days a week.

When it’s workout time on my schedule, I float into the PMM, a windowless module we use as a large closet, to change into shorts, socks, and a shirt. The PMM always reminds me of my grandparents’ basement—it’s dark, dingy, and has random stuff everywhere. My workout clothes are getting a bit fragrant because I’ve been using them for a couple of weeks—there is no laundry up here, so we wear clothes for as long as we can stand, then throw them out. I struggle to find something to hook my feet onto while I change. The clothes are still moist from yesterday’s exercise, making changing unpleasant.

I head into Node 3 and make my way to the treadmill. On the ceiling is a strap that holds a pair of shoes, a harness, and a heart monitor for each of us. I grab my running shoes and put them on, then I step onto the treadmill, which is mounted on the “wall” with respect to most of the other equipment.

I put my harness on, buckle it at the waist and chest, and clip into the bungee system that’s attached to the treadmill. This holds me in place as I run—without the harness, I would go flying off the treadmill with my first step. We can adjust the tension to control the perceived weight at which we’re running, though we can’t run at our normal body weight, as the pressure on our hips and shoulders would be too painful. I set up the laptop in front of me and start an episode of Game of Thrones. I deliberately avoided watching the series when it first aired and people were talking about it because I knew I would need some good escapist entertainment this year. Now I’m watching the whole series for the second time.

In some ways our treadmill is like the one you might find in a gym on Earth, but it’s mounted into its own unique vibration isolation system. The forces created by the runner pounding away could be surprisingly dangerous—an oscillation at the wrong frequency could tear the space station apart. On Mir, Russian mission control once had to ask American astronaut Shannon Lucid to run at a different pace or risk damaging the space station. On his first flight, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who will join us up here soon along with Kjell and Kimiya, created a potentially dangerous oscillation just by absentmindedly floating up and down a few inches, his feet gently pushing against the floor and a bungee cord.

I control the treadmill using software on the laptop, starting off slowly then gradually ramping up. I enjoy the daily exercise, but it’s hard on my joints. Some days the pain in my knees and feet is almost unbearable, though today it’s not too bad. I ramp up to my maximum speed. When I sweat, the liquid builds up on my bare head like water on a newly waxed car. I wipe it away with my two-week-old sweat towel. Once in a while other people come floating through, positioned perpendicular to me. It’s hard to sneak by the person on the treadmill without distracting them or, worse, hitting or kicking them, especially for people who are new on station. It takes some getting used to, seeing someone running on the wall.

While I’m running, Gennady comes by to check on something. There are some shit cans temporarily stored in a big bag on the floor of Node 1, waiting to go out on the outgoing Progress with the rest of the garbage, and Gennady had noticed they were smelling a bit. He checks one of the lids to make sure it’s sealed properly, only to accidentally liberate a cloud of toxic gas that nearly knocks me off the treadmill. It makes me think of the Monty Python sketch where everyone triggers one another to throw up. The entire U.S. segment smells wretched for a while, but I’m impressed by how quickly the system filters the air.

“As soon as I get back to Earth,” Gennady mutters in Russian, “I am going on a vacation.”

Soon after he leaves, I hear the voice of mission control.

“Station, Houston on Space to Ground Two. We are privatizing the space-to-ground channel. The flight director needs to speak to you.”

We are privatizing. These are words that make any astronaut’s blood freeze. They mean something bad has happened. I bring the treadmill to a stop, unhook myself, and grab the mic to talk to Houston.

The last time I heard “we are privatizing” was when SpaceX blew up. The time before that, my daughter Samantha was having a personal crisis. And of course on my last mission, the news that we were privatizing came when my sister-in-law was shot. I wait anxiously to find out what has gone wrong.

I hear the capcom on duty, Jay Marschke, refer to the trajectory operations officer (TOPO). For a moment, I’m relieved; at least it has nothing to do with my family.

“This is a red late-notice conjunction,” Jay says, “with a closest point of approach within a sphere of uncertainty.”

“Roger,” I say into the microphone. Then I make sure the microphone is off before I say what I really think about this, which is, “Fuck.”

A “conjunction” is a potential collision—a piece of space junk is headed our way, in this case an old Russian satellite. “Late notice” means we didn’t see it coming or that we miscalculated its trajectory, and “red” means it’s going to get dangerously close—we just don’t know how close. The “sphere of uncertainty” refers to the area it could pass through, a sphere with a radius of one mile. Because the impact could depressurize the station, letting our air out and killing us all, we will have to head to the Soyuz and use it as a possible lifeboat. If the debris streaking toward us collides with us, we will likely all be dead in two hours.

“How about relative velocity?” I ask. “Any idea?”

“Closing velocity of fourteen kilometers per second,” comes the answer.

“Copy,” I say into my headset. (“Fuck,” I say, again, to myself.) This is the worst possible answer to my question. If the satellite were in an orbit similar to ours, the closing speed might be as low as a few hundred miles per hour—a devastating speed for a car crash, but a best-case scenario for a space crash. Instead, the space station is traveling in one direction at 17,500 miles per hour, and the space junk is traveling at the same speed in the exact opposite direction; a 35,000-mile-per-hour closing rate—twenty times faster than a bullet from a gun. If the satellite hits, the resulting destruction would be much worse than what happens in the movie Gravity.

With six hours’ notice, the space station can move itself out of the way of oncoming orbital debris. The Air Force tracks the position and trajectory of thousands of objects in orbit—mostly old satellites, whole or in chunks. As with everything else, NASA has an abbreviation for these adjustments: PDAM, or predetermined debris avoidance maneuvers, which means firing the station’s engines to adjust its orbit. We’ve had two of this type since I’ve been up here. Today, however, is different. With only two hours’ notice, a PDAM will not be possible.

Mission control directs me to close and check all the hatches on the U.S. segment of the space station. I trained to do this in my preparations for this mission, and I run through the procedure in my mind in order to complete the steps properly and—most important—quickly. Even the hatches that were already closed need to be checked, like the unused berthing ports for visiting vehicles. With the hatches closed, if one module is hit, the others might survive—or at least their contents won’t be sucked out into the vacuum of space. There are eighteen hatches on the U.S. segment that must be closed or checked. While I’m working through the hatches as efficiently as I can, I get a call from mission control.

“Scott, Misha, it’s time to get ready for your event with WDRB in Louisville, Kentucky.”

“What?” I ask, incredulous. “Is there really time to be doing this?”

Misha shows up in the U.S. lab for our joint public affairs event, as he always does, with no time to spare but right on time.

“Public affairs events can’t be canceled,” comes the answer. The anchors want to ask us about watching the Kentucky Derby, which was almost two months ago. This is insane.

“Are they fucking kidding?” I say to Misha. He shakes his head in response. This is a bad decision, but it’s also not a great time to get into an argument with the ground.

Misha and I get into position in front of the camera with the handheld microphone.

“Station, Houston, are you ready for the event?” Jay asks.

“We are ready for the event,” I answer, struggling to keep the annoyance out of my voice. We spend the next five minutes answering questions about what we think of the probe that just reached Pluto, what landmark we may be passing over, and whether we got to watch the Kentucky Derby back in May. This kind of interview is part of our job, but today we can’t help but grit our teeth.

When we are asked about maneuvering in weightlessness, we turn somersaults for the Louisville viewers before signing off, still feeling pissed off that we had to waste our time this way, given the magnitude of the situation we are in. There is danger in becoming too complacent about the reality of life on an orbiting space station, and the decision to go ahead with this interview is, to me, clearly a symptom of that.

As soon as the cameras are off, I get back to checking that the hatches are closed. Luckily there are no serious issues with any of them—I don’t have the time to fix any problems. I collect the items from the U.S. segment that we will need most if a collision destroys that part of the station: the defibrillator, the advanced life support medical kit, my iPad with important procedures on it, my iPod, and a bag of personal items. I also make sure I have my thumb drive of images and videos from Amiko that I wouldn’t want to lose track of. By the time I have gathered all my important items, we have about twenty minutes to spare before potential impact.

I go to the Russian segment, where I see that the cosmonauts have not bothered with closing their hatches. They think closing the hatches is a waste of time, and they have a point. The two most likely scenarios are that the satellite will miss us, in which case closing the hatches will have been pointless, or it will hit us, in which case the station will be vaporized in an instant, and it won’t make a bit of difference if the hatches are open or closed. It is incredibly unlikely that one module could be hit and the others survive intact, but just in case, mission control has me spend more than two hours preparing for that eventuality; the Russian approach is to say fuck it and spend what might be their last twenty minutes having lunch. I reach my crewmates in time to join them for a small can of Appetizing Appetizer.

Ten minutes before potential impact we make our way to the Soyuz, which Gennady has prepared for flight in case we have to detach from the station. It’s orbital night now and dark in the Soyuz as we each slide into our seats. It’s cramped and cold and loud.

“You know,” Gennady says, “it will really suck if we get hit by this satellite.”

“Da,” Misha agrees. “Will suck.”

Only four other times in fifteen years have crews had to shelter in place as we are now. I can hear our breathing over the sounds of the fans stirring the air inside the Soyuz. I don’t think any one of us is actually fearful. We’ve all been in risky situations before. We do talk, though, about the size and velocity of the piece of space junk coming toward us. We all agree that it’s a potentially disastrous scenario.

Misha stares out the window. I remind him that he won’t be able to see the satellite coming toward us—it will be going way too fast for the human eye to perceive, and besides, it’s dark outside. He keeps looking anyway, and soon I’m looking out my window too. The clock counts down. Once the time gets down to seconds, I feel myself tensing, starting to grimace. We wait. Then…nothing. Thirty seconds go by. We look at one another with a last heartbeat of anticipation of disaster. Then our grimaces slowly turn into expressions of relief.

“Moscow, are we still waiting?” Gennady asks.

“Gennady Ivanovich, that’s it,” Moscow mission control responds. “The moment has passed. It is safe; you can go back to work now.”

We float out of the Soyuz one by one, Gennady and Misha finish lunch, and then I spend most of the day opening all the hatches.

Later, as I reflect on the situation, I realize that if the satellite had in fact hit us, we probably wouldn’t even have known it. When an aircraft flies into a mountain in bad weather, at five hundred miles per hour, there is little left to tell the story of what went wrong: this crash would have taken place at a speed seventy times that. When I used to work on investigations of aircraft mishaps as a Navy test pilot, I would sometimes reflect that a crew might never have known that anything had gone wrong. Misha, Gennady, and I would have gone from grumbling to one another in our cold Soyuz to being blasted in a million directions as diffused atoms, all in the space of a millisecond. Our neurological systems would not even have had time to process the incoming data into conscious thought. The energy involved in a collision between two large objects at 35,000 miles per hour would be similar to that of a nuclear bomb. I think of that time I almost flew an F-14 into the water and would have disappeared without a trace.

I don’t know whether this comforts me or disturbs me.

IN ELEVEN DAYS, a new crew will arrive. I try not to think about how much more time I will have up here, since I know that will only make it harder. But my year in space will divide itself neatly into four expeditions of three months each, and when Kjell, Kimiya, and Oleg arrive, that will mark the passage of only one-quarter of my time here.