by Scott Kelly
MY GOAL FOR most of my adult life has been to pilot aircraft and spacecraft. So it sometimes strikes me as odd that the International Space Station doesn’t need to be piloted at all. When I try to explain this to people who don’t know much about the station, I tell them it’s more like a ship traveling the world’s oceans than like an airplane. Something like the USS La Jolla, a submarine I served on for a few days as a midshipman while still in college, which was self-contained and self-powering. We don’t fly the space station—it’s controlled by software, and even if human intervention is needed, it is controlled by laptops on board or on the ground. We live in the space station, the way you live in a building. We work in it, the way scientists work in a laboratory, and we also work on it, the way mechanics work on a boat, if the boat were adrift in international waters and the Coast Guard had no way to reach it.
I sometimes see the station described as an object: “The International Space Station is the most expensive object ever created.” “The ISS is the only object whose components were manufactured by different countries and assembled in space.” That much is true. But when you live inside the station for months, it doesn’t feel like an object. It feels like a place, a very specific place with its own personality and its own unique characteristics. It has an inside and an outside and rooms upon rooms, each of which serve different purposes, its own equipment and hardware, and its own feeling and smell, distinct from the others. Each module has its own story and its own quirks.
I’ve been on station for a week now. I’m getting better at knowing where I am when I first wake up. If I have a headache, I know it’s because I’ve drifted too far from the vent blowing clean air at my face. I’m often still disoriented about how my body is positioned—I’ll wake up convinced that I’m upside down, because in the dark and without gravity, my inner ear just takes a random guess as to how my body is positioned in the small space. When I turn on a light, I have a sort of visual illusion that the room is rotating rapidly as it reorients itself around me, though I know it’s actually my brain readjusting in response to new sensory input.
The light in my crew quarters takes a minute to warm up to full brightness. The space is just barely big enough for me and my sleeping bag, two laptops, some clothes, toiletries, photos of Amiko and my daughters, a few paperback books. Without getting out of my sleeping bag, I wake up one of the two computers attached to the wall and write down what I remember of my dreams. After my last flight, people were interested in my descriptions of the vivid and surreal dreams I had in space, but I forgot most of them, so I’m making a point of keeping a more consistent dream journal this time.
Then I look at my schedule for today. I click through new emails, stretch and yawn, then fish around in my toiletries bag, attached to the wall down by my left knee, for my toothpaste and toothbrush. I brush, still in my sleeping bag, then swallow the toothpaste and chase it with a sip of water out of a bag with a straw. There isn’t really a good way to spit in space. I spend a few minutes looking over the daily summary sent up by the Mission Control Center in Houston, an electronic document that shows the state of the space station and its systems, asks us questions they came up with overnight, and includes important notes for the plan we’re going to execute that day. There’s also a cartoon at the end, often making fun of either us or themselves. Today’s daily summary shows it’s going to be a challenging day, and these are the days I look forward to.
My crew quarters on board the ISS, a place to sleep but also my personal private space. My home in our home away from home for a year Credit 3
Mission control schedules our days into increments as short as five minutes using a program called OSTPV (Onboard Short Term Plan Viewer), which rules our lives. Throughout the day, a dotted red line moves relentlessly across the OSTPV window on my laptop, pushing through the block of time mission control has estimated for each task. NASA people are optimists by nature, and unfortunately this optimism can extend to the estimate of how long it will take me to perform a certain task, such as repairing a piece of hardware or conducting an experiment. If I take longer than scheduled to complete a task, the extra time has to come out of something else on the schedule—a meal, my exercise time, the brief time I get to myself at the end of the day (which OSTPV labels “pre-sleep”), or—worst of all—sleep. Most of us wind up having complicated relationships with the line on the OSTPV screen. Sometimes when I’m working on something challenging, the line seems to speed up malevolently, and I could swear something is wrong with it. Other times, it seems to settle down and match the passage of time as I perceive it. Of course, if I could somehow zoom out my view of the schedule wide enough to take in the entire year, the line would be creeping forward so slowly it wouldn’t appear to be moving at all. Today’s schedule seems well thought out, but there are a few ways in which things could go wrong. For Terry, Samantha, and me, much of today is to be taken up with one long task labeled DRAGON CAPTURE.
From the outside, the International Space Station looks like a number of giant empty soda cans attached to one another end to end. The length of the station is made up of five modules connected the long way—three American and two Russian. More modules, including ones from Europe and Japan as well as the United States, are connected as offshoots to port and starboard, and the Russians have three that are attached up and down (we call these directions zenith and nadir). Between my first mission to the space station and this one, it has grown by seven modules, a significant proportion of its volume. This growth is not haphazard but reflects an assembly sequence that had been planned since the beginning of the space station project in the 1990s. Whenever visiting vehicles are berthed here—resupply spacecraft like the Russian Progress, American Cygnus, Japanese HTV, or SpaceX Dragon—for a time there is a new “room,” usually on the Earth-facing side of the station; to get into one of them, I have to turn “down” rather than turning left or right. Those rooms get roomier as we get the cargo unpacked, then get smaller again as we fill them with trash. Not that we need the space—especially on the U.S. segment, the station feels quite roomy, and in fact we can lose one another in here easily. But the appearance of extra rooms—and then their disappearance, after we set them loose—is a bit strange. It used to be that uncrewed cargo vehicles were built as one-use spacecraft, and after we detached them from the station they burned up in the atmosphere. The relatively new SpaceX Dragon has the capability to return to Earth intact, which gives us more flexibility.
I won’t get to spend time outside the station until my first of two planned spacewalks, which won’t be for almost seven months. This is one of the things that some people find difficult to imagine about living on the space station—the fact that I can’t step outside when I feel like it. Putting on a spacesuit and leaving the station for a spacewalk is an hours-long process that requires the full attention of at least three people on station and dozens more on the ground. Spacewalks are the most dangerous thing we do on orbit.
Even if the station is on fire, even if it’s filling up with poisonous gas, even if a meteoroid has crashed through a module and our air is rushing out, the only way to escape the station is in a Soyuz capsule, which also needs preparation and planning to depart safely. We practice dealing with emergency scenarios regularly, and in many of these drills we race to prepare the Soyuz as quickly as we can. No one has ever had to use the Soyuz as a lifeboat, and no one hopes to.
The space station is an international effort and a shared facility, but in practice I spend almost all of my time on the cluster of modules—which, together with American and Japanese visiting vehicles—we call the U.S. operational segment. My cosmonaut colleagues spend the majority of their time on the Russian segment, consisting of the Russian modules as well as the visiting Russian Progress and Soyuz spacecraft.
The module where I spend a lot of my day is the U.S. module formally named Destiny, but which we mostly just call “the lab.” It’s a state-of-the-art scientific laboratory with walls, floors, an
d ceiling packed with equipment. Because there is no gravity, every surface is usable storage space. There are science experiments, computers, cables, cameras, tools, office supplies, freezers—crap all over the place. The lab looks cluttered—people with OCD would probably have trouble living and working here—but the things I use most I can put my hands on in seconds. There are also a large number of things I would not be able to put my hands on if asked—without gravity, items wander off regularly, and the ground will often email us WANTED posters regarding lost objects, like the ones the FBI puts in post offices. Occasionally one of us will dislodge a tool or part that has been missing for years. Eight years is the record, so far, for a missing object reappearing.
Most of the spaces where I spend my time have no windows and no natural light but rather bright fluorescent lights and clinical white walls. Devoid of any earthly color, the modules seem cold and utilitarian, like a prison of sorts. Because the sun rises and sets every ninety minutes, we can’t use it to keep track of time. So without my watch keeping me on Greenwich Mean Time and a schedule tightly structuring my days, I’d be completely lost.
It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived here how much we start to miss nature. In the future there will be a word for the specific kind of nostalgia we feel for living things. We all like to listen to recordings of nature—rainforests, birdcalls, wind in the trees. (Misha even has a recording of mosquitoes, which I think goes a bit too far.) As sterile and lifeless as everything is up here, we do have windows that give us a fantastic view of Earth. It’s hard to describe the experience of looking down at the planet. I feel as though I know the Earth in an intimate way most people don’t—the coastline, terrain, mountains, and rivers. Some parts of the world, especially in Asia, are so blanketed by air pollution that they appear sick, in need of treatment or at least a chance to heal. The line of our atmosphere on the horizon looks as thin as a contact lens over an eye, and its fragility seems to demand our protection. One of my favorite views of the Earth is of the Bahamas—a large archipelago with a stunning contrast from light to dark colors. The vibrant deep blue of the ocean mixes with a much brighter turquoise, swirled with something almost like gold, where the sun bounces off the sandy shallows and reefs. Whenever new crewmates come up to the station for the first time, I make a point of taking them to the Cupola (a module made entirely of windows looking down on Earth) to see the Bahamas. That sight always reminds me to stop and appreciate the view of the Earth I’ve been given the privilege of seeing.
Looking down at Earth from the Cupola module on board ISS Credit 4
Sometimes when I’m looking out the window it occurs to me that everything that matters to me, every person who has ever lived and died (besides the six of us), is down there. Other times, of course, I’m aware that the people on the space station with me are the whole of humanity for me now. If I’m going to talk to someone in the flesh, look someone in the eye, ask someone for help, share a meal with someone, it will be one of them.
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SINCE BEFORE the space shuttle was retired, NASA has been contracting with private companies to develop spacecraft capable of supplying the station with cargo and, at some point in the future, new crews. The most successful private company so far has been Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, which produces the Dragon spacecraft. Yesterday, a Dragon launched successfully from the Kennedy Space Center. Since then, Dragon has been in orbit a safe ten kilometers from us. This morning, our aim is to capture it with the space station’s robot arm and attach it to the berthing port on station. The process of grappling a visiting vehicle is a bit like playing an arcade claw machine, except that it involves real equipment worth millions of dollars flying at impossible speeds. Not only could an error cause us to lose or damage the Dragon and the valuable supplies on board, but a slip of the hand could crash the visiting vehicle into the station. A Progress cargo spacecraft once struck the old Russian space station Mir, and its crew was lucky not to have been killed by the rapid loss of atmosphere.
These uncrewed rockets are the only means by which we can get adequate supplies from Earth. The Soyuz spacecraft has the capability to send three human beings to space, but there is almost no room left over for anything else. SpaceX has had a lot of success so far with their Dragon spacecraft and Falcon rocket, and in 2012 they became the first private company to reach the International Space Station. They hope to be able to fly astronauts on the Dragon in the next few years. If they can pull that off, they will be the first private company to carry human beings to orbit, and that launch will be the first time astronauts leave Earth from the United States since the space shuttle was retired in 2011.
Right now, Dragon is carrying 4,300 pounds of supplies we need. There is food, water, and oxygen; spare parts and supplies for the systems that keep us alive; health-care supplies like needles and vacuum tubes for drawing our blood, sample containers, medications; clothing and towels and washcloths, all of which we throw away after using them for as long as we can. Dragon will also be bringing new science experiments for us to carry out, as well as new samples to keep the existing ones going. Notable among the science experiments is a small population of twenty live mice for a study we will be conducting on how weightlessness affects bone, muscle, and vision. Each resupply spacecraft also carries small care packages from our families, which we always look forward to, and precious supplies of fresh food that we enjoy for just a few days, until it runs out or goes bad. Fruits and vegetables seem to rot faster here than on Earth. I’m not sure why, and seeing the process makes me worry that the same thing is happening to my own cells.
We are especially looking forward to this Dragon’s arrival because another resupply rocket exploded just after launch back in October. That one was a Cygnus flown by another private contractor, Orbital ATK. The station is always supplied far beyond the needs of the current crew, so there was no immediate danger of running out of food or oxygen when those supplies were lost. Still, this was the first time a rocket to resupply ISS had failed in years, and it destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. And the loss of vital supplies like food and oxygen made everyone think harder about what would happen if a string of failures were to occur. A few days after the explosion, an experimental space plane being developed by Virgin Galactic crashed in the Mojave Desert, killing the copilot, Michael Alsbury. These failures were unrelated, of course, but the timing made it feel as though a string of bad luck might be catching up with us after years of success.
I get dressed while I skim over the procedures for the Dragon capture again. We all trained for this thoroughly before launch, capturing many imaginary Dragons using a simulator, so I’m just refreshing my recollection. Getting dressed is a bit of a hassle when you can’t sit or stand, but I’ve gotten used to it. The most challenging thing is putting on my socks without gravity to help me bend over. It’s not a challenge to figure out what to wear, since I wear the same thing every day: a pair of khaki pants with lots of pockets and strips of Velcro across the thighs, crucial when I can’t put anything down. I have decided to experiment with how long I can make my clothes last, the idea of going to Mars in the back of my mind. Can a pair of underwear be worn four days instead of two? Can a pair of socks last a month? Can a pair of pants last six months? I aim to find out. I put on my favorite black T-shirt and a sweatshirt that, because it’s flying with me for the third time, has to be one of the most traveled pieces of clothing in the history of clothing.
Dressed and ready for breakfast, I open the door to my CQ. As I push against the back wall to float myself out, I accidentally kick loose a paperback book: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. I brought this book with me on my previous flight as well, and sometimes I flip through it after a long day and reflect on what these explorers went through almost exactly a hundred years before. They were stranded on ice floes for months at a time, forced to kill their dogs for food, and nearly froze to death in the biting cold.
They hiked across mountains that had been considered impassable by explorers who were better equipped and not half starved. Remarkably, not a single member of the expedition was lost.
When I try to put myself in their place, I think the uncertainty must have been the worst thing. The doubt about their survival would be worse than the hunger and the cold. When I read about their experiences, I think about how much harder they had it than I do. Sometimes I’ll pick up the book specifically for that reason. If I’m inclined to feel sorry for myself because I miss my family or because I had a frustrating day or because the isolation is getting to me, reading a few pages about the Shackleton expedition reminds me that even if I have it hard up here in some ways, I’m certainly not going through what they did.
Out in Node 1, the module that serves largely as our kitchen and living room, I open a food container attached to the wall and fish out a pouch of dehydrated coffee with cream and sugar. I float over to the hot water dispenser in the ceiling of the lab, which works by inserting a needle into a nozzle on the bag. When the bag is full, I replace the needle with a drinking straw equipped with a valve to pinch it closed. It was oddly unsatisfying at first to drink coffee from a plastic bag sipped through a straw, but now I’m not bothered by it. I flip through the breakfast options, looking for a packet of the granola I like. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to like it too. I choose some dehydrated eggs instead and reconstitute them with the same hot water dispenser, then warm up some irradiated sausage links in the food warmer box, which resembles a metal briefcase. I cut the bag open, then clean the scissors by licking them, since we have no sink (we each have our own scissors). I spoon the eggs out of the bag onto a tortilla—conveniently, surface tension holds them in place—add the sausage and some hot sauce, roll it up, and eat the burrito while catching up with the morning’s news on CNN. All the while I’m holding myself in place with my right big toe tucked ever so slightly under a handrail on the floor. Handrails are placed on the walls, floors, and ceilings of every module and at the hatches where modules connect, allowing us to propel ourselves through the modules or to stay in place rather than drifting away.