That night, floating in my sleeping bag with my eyes closed, I have one of those little convulsions people sometimes get when they are just about to fall asleep, when it feels like you’re falling and you try to catch yourself. In space, these are more dramatic because without gravity holding me to the bed, my body undulates wildly back and forth. And this one was especially dramatic because it coincided with a bright cosmic ray flash. As I try to fall asleep again, I wonder whether the cosmic ray somehow triggered my reflex response or if it’s strictly a coincidence.
In the daily planning conference, we learn that Terry, Samantha, and Anton will leave on June 11, more than a month late, and the new crew will come up on July 22. Their Soyuz has been docked here since November, and it’s only safe for the spacecraft to sit idle for a certain period of time. It’s not clear how much of this decision hinges on that time constraint, and how much on the determination that their Soyuz is free of the issues that doomed Progress. Either way, the Russian space agency has weighed the risks and decided it will soon be time for them to go.
After the daily planning conference, I immediately go through the steps of preparing the Seedra to be powered up. When I tell the ground we are ready, there is a dramatic pause.
“Powering up,” capcom says. “Stand by.”
We stand by.
It doesn’t work.
“Son of a…bitch!” I say, being sure not to key the microphone since we’re on an open channel.
“We’ll take a look at this and get back to you,” says the capcom.
“Copy,” I reply, dejected.
Because it’s Friday, we will have to live with high CO2 levels all weekend; when one Seedra fails, it takes a while for the other to come up to speed, and flight controllers won’t even start trying to figure out what’s wrong until Monday. I’m going to feel like crap all weekend, and it will be even worse because that will be a constant reminder of what a clusterfuck this CO2 situation is, how little the ISS program managers seem to care about our symptoms.
I knew this year was going to test my psychological endurance more than physical, and I think I was as prepared as anyone could be. Having flown a long-duration mission before, I understand how important it is to manage my energy from day to day and week to week, which includes choosing what to get upset about. But this is incredibly depressing. I float into my CQ to take a few minutes for myself and be pissed.
I click through some emails, aware that I’m using a bit more force on the laptop than is necessary. There’s one from Amiko wishing me a happy Friday, and I decide to call her before heading over to the Russian segment for dinner. She picks up on the second ring and sounds happy to hear from me. She’s still in the middle of her workday but is looking forward to the weekend. I try to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but she sees right through me.
“What’s wrong? You don’t sound good,” she says. Even before I can draw breath to answer, she asks, “The CO2 is high, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. I tell her the whole saga with the Seedra and what we face for the weekend. I tell her I’m impressed that she could tell the CO2 was high just from my voice.
“Not just your voice, but your mood,” she clarifies. “When you sound like you’re letting things get to you, I know the CO2 is high.”
She is the only person on planet Earth who seems to care.
At Friday night dinner, we talk about the new landing date for Terry, Samantha, and Anton. I will be alone for six weeks on the U.S. segment before their replacements arrive. It’s a long time to be floating around by myself, but being alone doesn’t seem like a bad thing. I like having crewmates, and I’ve especially enjoyed working with Terry and Samantha, but being alone won’t be an unwelcome change. Besides, each time people leave or arrive marks another milestone of my mission that I’ve successfully put behind me.
As we eat, I say, “I guess I’ll be able to float around naked in the U.S. segment.”
“You can float around naked now, if you want to,” Samantha says with an offhanded shrug, digging in the bottom of a bag of ravioli.
“Guys, do you think the Soyuz landing will definitely be in June?” Anton asks Terry and me.
Terry and I look at each other, then at him.
“Anton, aren’t you the Soyuz commander?” Terry asks rhetorically.
“Da,” says Anton. He shakes his head and smiles, acknowledging the strangeness of the situation. We should be asking him for information, not the other way around. “I thought you might have heard something I didn’t.” At times, it seems the Russian space agency deliberately keeps their cosmonauts in the dark.
“We’ll let you know if we hear anything,” Terry promises.
It seems as though we could use some better communication all around.
—
ALONG WITH Saturday morning science, we sometimes have other activities scheduled on weekends that weren’t high enough priority to make it into the regular schedule. Today is one of those. Samantha is going to set up and test out a new piece of equipment designed by the European Space Agency: an espresso machine. Apparently when you have Europeans in space, you also have to have good coffee—the instant stuff just isn’t the same. After working through the procedures to brew a small bag of espresso, including multiple troubleshooting calls to the payload operations center in Huntsville, the historic first espresso shot in space is brewed. I take a picture of Samantha holding the espresso in a special cup designed to allow sipping in zero g. As she takes the first drink, I say, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for coffee,” over the space-to-ground channel. I’m pretty pleased with my line. The machine cost more than a million dollars to build, certify for flight, and launch; there are only ten espresso packets on board, making Samantha’s drink a very expensive cup of coffee—worthy of a historic quote.
—
A USEFUL WAY to think of an orbiting object like the International Space Station is that it is going fast enough that the force of gravity keeps it curving around the Earth. We think of objects in orbit as being stable, staying at the same distance above the planet, but in reality the small amount of atmospheric drag that exists at 250 miles above the Earth’s surface pulls on us even when we are whizzing along at 17,500 miles per hour. Without intervention our orbit would tighten until we eventually crashed into the Earth’s surface. This will be allowed to happen some day when NASA and our international partners decide that the station has finished its useful life. It will be deorbited in a controlled manner to make sure that when it hits the planet, it will be in a safe area in the Pacific Ocean, and I hope to be there to watch. This is how the Russian space station Mir ended its life.
We keep ISS in orbit using a Progress that is docked here. Mission control calculates how long to fire its engine, and that force boosts us back into the proper orbit. Sometimes we wake up in the morning to learn that a successful reboost has taken place while we slept.