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THE IDEA of leaving the Earth for a year didn’t feel especially vivid until a couple of months before I was to go. On January 20, 2015, I attended the State of the Union Address at the invitation of President Obama. He was planning to mention my yearlong mission in his speech. It was an honor to sit in the House Chamber with the gathered members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs, the cabinet, and the Supreme Court. I sat in the gallery wearing my bright blue NASA flight jacket over a shirt and tie. The president described the goals of the yearlong mission—to solve the problems of getting to Mars—and called me out personally.
“Good luck, Captain!” he said. “Make sure to Instagram it! We’re proud of you.”
The assembled Congress got to their feet and applauded. I stood and gave an awkward nod and a wave. To see the government come together, even if only in a physical sense, was touching, and it was great to experience in person the bipartisan support NASA often enjoys.
I was seated next to Alan Gross, who had been held in a Cuban prison for five years. He suggested that while I was in space I should count up—count the number of days I had been there—rather than counting down the number of days I had left. It will be easier that way, he said. And that’s exactly what I did.
17
November 6, 2015
Dreamed I was back on Earth and was allowed to return to the Navy to fly F-18s off the aircraft carrier. I was elated because I thought I would never get to fly like that again. I went back to my old squadron, the World Famous Pukin’ Dogs, and all the same guys were there, unchanged from when I left. It was great because I was allowed to be like a junior officer even though I have the rank of captain. Because I had so much flight experience, everything was easy for me, supernaturally easy, especially landing on the ship.
NOVEMBER MARKS the nine-year anniversary of my surgery, and I reflect on the fact that I have spent more than a year of my life in space after having been diagnosed with and treated for cancer. I don’t think of myself as a “cancer survivor”—more like a person whose prostate gland had cancer, which was removed and disposed of. But I’m happy if my story is meaningful to others, especially kids, as an example that they can still achieve great things.
Once again, Kjell and I have spent days preparing our suits and equipment, reviewing procedures, and conferencing with experts on the ground. This spacewalk will have two goals: one is to replumb a cooling system, bringing it back to its original configuration so a spare radiator can be saved for future use. The other is to top off that cooling system’s ammonia supply (the space station uses high-concentration ammonia to cool the electronics). These tasks might sound unexciting, and in many ways they are. Yet the story of how we have kept the space station cool—a huge chunk of metal flying through space getting roasted by the unfiltered sun for forty-five minutes out of every ninety while its enormous solar arrays generate electricity—is a story of an engineering triumph with important implications for future spaceflight. The work Kjell and I will do today to keep the cooling system working will be one small piece of that larger story, just as the work of the astronauts and cosmonauts who have performed the hundreds of spacewalks from the station over the years have each contributed something invaluable to its construction.
The day of our second spacewalk starts much like our first: up early, quick breakfast, prebreathe oxygen, get suited up. Today I’ve decided to wear my glasses, because I found the Fresnel lenses attached to my visor didn’t work as well as I’d hoped on our first venture outside the station. At one point, the tether for one of the tools I was working with became tangled, and I wasn’t able to see the knot clearly enough to undo it. Luckily, it magically untangled itself. There are risks involved in wearing glasses—if they slip off, there will be nothing I can do about it with my helmet on, but I prepare for that problem by taping them to my head. Being bald, I have the perfect haircut for this technique. I regret not getting comfortable with contact lenses.
I put my comm cap on and scratch any itchy spots one last time before my helmet is sealed. Kjell and I get into the airlock. This time, I know that neither of us will flip our water switches early, and I also know I won’t have to be the one to struggle to get the hatch open or closed—that’s the job of the lead spacewalker.
Our work site today will be all the way out at the end of the truss, 150 feet from the airlock—so far that we need to use the length of both our safety tethers together to reach it. As we start the journey, translating hand over hand along the rails, I notice again how much damage has been done to the outside of the station by micrometeoroids and orbital debris. It’s remarkable to see the pits in the metal handrails going all the way through like bullet holes. I’m shocked again to see them.
Our ground IV today is a veteran astronaut I’ve known for fifteen years, Megan McArthur. Despite being one of the youngest astronauts when she was selected, at twenty-eight, she’s always been calm and sure of herself, even under pressure. She is talking us through our work today, and with her help, Kjell and I get ourselves and our tools out to the work site.
Our first task is a two-person job: removing a cover from a metal box and driving a bolt to open a valve that opens the flow of ammonia. Kjell and I get into an easy rhythm where it seems as though we can read each other’s minds, and it feels as if Megan is right there in lockstep with us. We work together with an uncanny level of efficiency. With our visors almost pressed against each other, Kjell and I can’t help but make occasional eye contact, and when we do, I get a sense he is thinking the same thing as me. Even though I’m not superstitious, I don’t want to jinx it, or us, by saying, “This is going great” or “This is turning out to be pretty easy.” We just need to keep it up until we are done.