This morning, though, an attempted reboost failed. The Progress engine burned for just one second, not the several-minute burn we usually do. Once again, a Progress has failed to function properly, and, once again, we must worry about what that will mean for us.
We are not in any immediate danger of crashing into the Earth—it would take many months for our orbit to decay to a dangerous degree—but we also use the Progress engines to move the station out of the way of space junk, so the failure could have frightening consequences. This is another strike against a piece of hardware everyone had thought of as rock solid, challenging our confidence in the Soyuz spacecraft, which are made with identical or similar components and by the same manufacturer—including the one that is meant to be my ride home.
Now that we have lost the supplies that were supposed to reach us on the Progress, we have to be more vigilant about the trash we pack into the empty visiting vehicles, making sure we aren’t disposing of anything usable. Terry and I spend some time going through bags of stuff that other crew members have discarded, looking for uneaten food, clean clothes, or other consumable supplies. While we work, we talk about whether or not Terry’s Soyuz will leave anywhere near on time. As I’m sorting out food packets and talking, I find myself holding something made of fabric. It’s some dude’s used underwear. I stuff it into the trash and excuse myself to wash my hands a hundred times, an unsatisfying process without running water.
The good news is that the Node 3 Seedra is working again. It had failed because the fan that pushes air through the system wasn’t starting. After some investigation and discussion, the ground devised a solution to fix it by replacing just the fan motor without pulling the whole unit out of the rack. That worked, miraculously, and now we are breathing clean air again. It’s remarkable how good this is for morale.
That Friday night, we are having dinner on the Russian segment, and we know it will be one of our last with Terry, Anton, and Samantha. Terry floats to the U.S. segment to retrieve the last of the ice cream that came up on SpaceX, and when he comes back he has a troubled look on his face.
“Scott, the ground is trying to get in touch with you,” he says. “You need to call your daughter Samantha right away. They said it’s an emergency.”
“Why didn’t they call me here?” I ask. There is another space-to-ground channel in the Russian segment.
My crewmates all look at me with concern. They know that I got a similar call on the space station five years ago, when my sister-in-law was shot.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I say, for their benefit more than mine. I go to my CQ, where I can talk privately. Only then do I realize that we don’t have communication coverage, and I won’t be able to make a call for twenty minutes. I spend that time thinking about Samantha, about what she was like as a spirited toddler, as a bright-eyed school-age kid, as a moody teenager. I still blame myself for the problems Samantha and I have had in our relationship since her mother and I split up. The teenage and young adult years are a stormy time for a lot of kids, and I know that Samantha has had to deal with fallout from the divorce, caring for her mother and her younger sister in ways that I don’t even know about. It’s been an ongoing struggle to get to a place where we can be comfortable with each other without fear of blowups.
When the satellites are finally aligned, I put on my headset and click on the icon to place a call to Samantha’s cell. She answers on the second ring.
“Hi, Dad.” She knows it’s me because calls from the space station are all routed through the Johnson Space Center.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?” I ask, trying to sound calm.
“Not much,” she says. “I’m at Uncle Mark and Gabby’s. Everyone has left, and I’m lonely.” I can tell from her tone that nothing is wrong. She sounds bored.
“That’s it? There’s no emergency?” I ask, feeling my concern subside and give way to irritation. It felt like the times I’d lost track of one of the girls at a shopping center and looked for them long enough to start fearing the worst.
Samantha explains that she had flown to Tucson for the high school graduation of her cousin Claire, Mark’s younger daughter. Samantha had chosen to go to the graduation because she has been going through a hard time and was feeling cut off from our family while I am away. She thought it might make her feel better to be at a gathering of Kellys. But the night after the graduation Mark and Gabby had left town, and shortly after that, Claudia, Mark’s older daughter, left as well, leaving Samantha by herself in an empty house. She had felt abandoned and wanted to get home, and when she didn’t get a response to a number of emails, she had called Spanky. When he conveyed her request to mission control, her request had been misinterpreted as an emergency.
The absurdity is not lost on me that I’m in space for a year, and she’s lonely. But I’m also reminded just how much my family is sacrificing for this mission.
She apologizes for scaring me and promises to leave a clearer message next time. I go back over to the Russian segment to rejoin the festivities, my mood somewhat dampened.
That night, I have one of those twilight falling-asleep dreams. For some reason, I’m focused on the death of Beau Biden, the vice president’s son, who passed away from brain cancer yesterday at forty-six. I never met him, but I heard great things about him. His death bothers me more than I would have expected. In my half-awake state it occurs to me that one day we’re all going to be dead, that we will all be dead much longer than we were alive. In a sense I feel I know what it will be like, because we were all “dead” once, before we were born. For each of us, there was a moment when we became self-aware, realized that we were alive, and the nothingness before that wasn’t particularly objectionable. This thought, strange as it may be, is reassuring. I wake up long enough to type an email to Amiko about it.
People often ask me whether I had any epiphanies in space, whether seeing the Earth from space made me feel closer to God or more at one with the universe. Some astronauts have come back with a new view of humanity’s role in the cosmos, which has inspired new spiritual beliefs or caused them to rededicate themselves to the faiths they grew up with. I would never question anyone else’s experience, but this vantage point has never created any particular spiritual insight for me.