“Yep,” Misha agrees. “Totally screwed.”
Now we are in the rendezvous stage. Joining two objects in two different orbits traveling at different speeds (in this case, the Soyuz and the ISS) is a long process. It’s one we understand well and have been through many times, but still it’s a delicate maneuver. We pick up a strange broadcast over Europe:
…scattered one thousand four hundred feet. Temperature one nine. Dew point one seven. Altimeter two niner niner five. ATIS information Oscar…
It’s some airport’s terminal broadcast, a recording giving pilots information about weather and approaches. We shouldn’t be receiving this, but the Soyuz comm system is horrible. Every time Russian mission control talks to us we can hear the characteristic dit-dit-dit of cell phone interference. I want to yell at them to turn off their cell phones, but in the name of international cooperation I don’t.
A few hours into the flight my vision is still good, with no blurring—a positive sign. I do start to feel congested, though, which is a symptom I’ve experienced in space before. I feel my legs cramp, from being crammed into this seat for hours, and there is the never-ending knee pain. After MECO, we can unstrap ourselves, but there isn’t really anywhere to go.
Gennady opens the hatch to the orbital module, the other habitable part of the Soyuz, where the crew can stay if it takes more than a few hours to get to the station, but this module doesn’t have much more space. I disconnect my medical belt, a strap that goes around my chest to monitor my respiration and heartbeat during launch, and float up to the orbital module to use the toilet. It’s nearly impossible to pee while still halfway in my pressure suit. I can’t imagine how the women do it. After I get back into my seat, mission control yells at me to plug my medical belt back in. We get strapped back in a few hours before we will be docking. Gennady scrolls through the checklist on his tablet and starts inputting commands to the Soyuz systems. The process is largely automated, but he needs to stay on top of it in case something goes wrong and he has to take over.
Soyuz rendering showing the three sections of the spacecraft: orbital module, descent module, service module Credit 2
When it’s time for the docking probe to deploy, nothing happens. We wait. Gennady says something to Russian mission control in rapid-fire Russian. They respond, sounding annoyed, then garble into static. We are not sure if they heard us. We are still a long way from ISS.
“Fucking blya,” Gennady groans. Fucking bullshit.
Still no indication the docking probe has deployed. This could be a problem.
The process of docking two spacecraft together has remained pretty much unchanged from the Gemini days: one spacecraft sticks out a probe (in this case, us), inserts it into a receptacle called a drogue in the other spacecraft (the ISS), a connection is made, everyone cracks sex jokes, we leak-check the interface before opening the hatch and greeting our new crewmates. The process has been reliable for the past fifty years, but this time the probe doesn’t appear to have worked.
The three of us give one another a look, an international I-can’t-fucking-believe-this look. Soon, ISS will be looming in the window, its eight solar array wings glinting in the sun like the legs of a giant insect. But without the docking probe, we won’t be able to connect to it and climb aboard. We’ll have to return to Earth. Depending on when the next Soyuz will be ready, we might have to wait weeks or months. We could miss our chance altogether.
We contemplate the prospect of coming back to Earth, how ridiculous we’ll feel climbing out of this capsule, saying hello again to people we’ve just said the biggest good-bye in the world to. Comm with the ground is intermittent, so they can’t help us much in our efforts to figure out what’s going on. I turn to see Misha’s face. He is shaking his head in disappointment.
Once Gennady and Misha transition the computer software to a new mode, we see that the probe is in fact deployed. It was just a software “funny.”
All three of us sigh with relief. This day hasn’t been for nothing. We are still going to the space station.
I watch the fuzzy black-and-white image on our display as the docking port on ISS inches closer and closer. I wonder if it’s true that the probe is actually okay. The last part of the rendezvous is exciting, much more dynamic than the space shuttle docking ever was. The shuttle had to be docked manually, so it was a slow ballet with little room for error. But the Soyuz normally docks with ISS automatically, and in the last minutes of the approach it whips itself around quickly to do an adjustment burn. Even though we’d known to expect this, it’s still attention getting, and I watch out the window as the station comes flying into view, its brilliant metal sparkling in the sunlight as if it’s on fire. The engines fire briefly, and we hear and feel the acceleration. Leftover fuel vents outside, glinting in the sun. With the burn complete, we snap back into position to move toward the docking port.
When we finally make contact with the station, we hear and feel the eerie sound of the probe hitting, then scratching its way into the drogue, a grinding metal-on-metal sound that ends with a satisfying clunk. Now both ISS and the Soyuz are commanded to free drift—they are no longer controlling their attitude and are rotating freely in space until a more solid connection can be made. The probe is retracted to draw the two vehicles closer together, then hooks are driven through the docking port to reinforce the connection. We’ve made it. We slap one another on the arms.
I join Gennady in the orbital module, where we struggle out of the Sokol suits we put on nearly ten hours earlier. We are tired and sweaty but excited to be attached to our new home. I take off the diaper I’ve been wearing since I left Earth and put it in a Russian wet trash bag for later disposal on the ISS. I get into the blue flight suit I call my Captain America suit because of the huge American flag emblazoned across the front. I hate these flight suits—the Russian who has been making them for years can’t be made to understand that we stretch an inch or two in space, so within a few weeks I will no longer be able to wear the Captain America suit without having my balls crushed.