Endurance

by Scott Kelly

  I answer her right away, putting a vigor into my voice that I don’t actually feel. “Sure, no problem,” I say.

  I’ve been convincing myself all day that I actually feel fine, that I have plenty of energy left. Both Kjell’s life and my own depend on our ability to push past our limits. I’ve convinced myself so effectively that I’ve convinced the ground team too.

  I head to the back side of the truss again to check the vent valves. It’s dark now and starting to get cold. I don’t waste the effort to adjust the cooling on my suit—even just that simple gesture would hurt my hands too much. I would rather just freeze.

  In the darkness, I get turned around and upside down. I can see only what’s immediately in front of my face, like a scuba diver in murky waters, and it’s completely disorienting. Everything looks unfamiliar in the dark. (One difference between the Russian approach to spacewalking and ours is that the Russians stop working when it’s dark; the cosmonauts just hang on to the side of the station and rest, waiting for the sun to come up again. This is safer in one sense—they are probably less likely to make mistakes, and to tire—but they also expend twice as many resources and do twice as many spacewalks because they only work half the time they are outside.)

  I start to head in a direction I think is the right one, then realize it’s wrong, but I can’t tell whether I’m upside down or right side up. I read some mile markers—numbers attached to the handrails—to Megan, hoping she can help tell me where I am.

  “It looks much different in the dark,” I tell Megan.

  “Roger that,” she says.

  “Did I not go far enough aft?” I ask. “Let me go back to my safety tether.” I figure once I find the place where my tether is attached I’ll be able to get my bearings.

  “We’re working on cuing up the sun for you,” Megan jokes, “but it’s going to be another five minutes.”

  I look in the direction I think is Earth, hoping to catch a glimpse of some city lights 250 miles below in the darkness to get my bearings. If I just knew which way Earth is, I could figure out where I am on the truss. When I look around, all I see is black. Maybe I’m looking right at the Earth and not seeing any lights because we’re passing over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, or perhaps I’m just looking at space.

  I make my way back to where my tether is attached, but when I get there, I remember that Kjell had attached the tether, not me, so I’m not familiar with the area. I’m as disoriented as ever. I float for a minute, frustrated, thinking about what to do next.

  “Scott, can you see the PMM?”

  I can’t, but I don’t want to give up. I see a tether that I think is Kjell’s—if it is, I might be able to figure out where I am.

  “Scott,” Megan says, “we’re just going to send you back now—we don’t need to get this, so just head back to where your tether location is and then head back to the airlock.” She takes an upbeat tone, as if this is good news, but she knows it will be frustrating to me to hear they’re giving up on me.

  Eventually I catch a glimpse of lights above me. I’m not sure what it is at first, since above me is what I thought was the blackness of space. But as the lights come into focus, I see they are city lights—the unmistakable lights of the Middle East, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi, stretched along the Persian Gulf standing out against the blackness of the water and the desert sands.

  The lights reorient me—what I’d thought was down is up—and I feel the strange sensation of my internal gyroscope righting itself. Suddenly it’s clear where I am and where I need to go.

  “I see the PMM now, so I think I’m close,” I tell her. “I can go do it. I’d prefer to do it if you guys are okay with it.”

  A pause. I know Megan is consulting with the flight director about whether to let me continue or tell me to come back inside.

  “Okay, Scott, we’re going to take your lead. We’re happy to have you go and do that.”

  “Okay. I think I’m in good shape now.”

  When I reach the work site, the sun finally shines over the horizon while Megan talks me through the steps of configuring the vent valve on the ammonia tank. Once I’m done, Megan tells us to head back to the airlock.

  I contemplate making a joke to the ground by calling myself “Magellan”—a nickname we used to use in the Navy for those who got lost. But they might not get it, and besides, Magellan was killed before he made it home.

  I head back to the airlock, where I climb in first this time and get my tether secured so Kjell can follow. He crams himself in behind me. As he struggles to close the hatch, I try to hook up the oxygen and cooling umbilical to my suit. But my hands are so fatigued I’m fumbling. To make matters worse, my glasses are positioned in such a way that I’m peering at the connection between the umbilical and my suit through the very bottom edge of the lenses, and the distortion prevents me from seeing clearly. I struggle for a good ten minutes, by which time Kjell has maneuvered himself into a position where he can see my connection and help me out. Working together, we get it connected. This is why we do spacewalks in pairs.

  Kjell gets the hatch closed, and the air hisses in around us. The carbon dioxide in Kjell’s suit is showing an elevated reading, so when the airlock finishes repressurizing, Kimiya and Sergey hurry to get him out of his helmet first. Through my visor, I can see that he is okay, nodding and talking. It will be ten minutes before Kimiya can take my helmet off. Kjell and I are attached to opposite walls, facing each other, held in place by the racks that secure our spacesuits. We have been in these suits for almost eleven hours. While I float there and wait to get out of my helmet, Kjell and I don’t have to talk—we just share a look, the same look you’d give someone if you’d been riding down a familiar street together, chatting about this and that, and missed by nanoseconds being T-boned by an oncoming train. It’s the look of realizing we’ve shared this experience that we both know was at the limit of our abilities and could have killed us.

  When Kimiya lifts my helmet off my head, Kjell and I can finally see each other without plastic in between. We still don’t feel any need for words.

  Kjell smiles an exhausted smile and nods at me. His face is pale and sweaty, bathed in the artificial light.

  Hours later, Kjell and I pass in the U.S. lab. “There ain’t going to be no rematch,” I say, quoting from Rocky.

  “I don’t want one,” says Kjell, laughing his big boisterous laugh.

  We have no way of knowing it yet, but only one of us is done with spacewalks.

  —

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I wake up to find a public affairs event on the schedule with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology for both Kjell and me. We’ve been given no preparation or warning, as we should have been for such an important event, and because my day is packed between now and then, I won’t have the chance to get ready. Even worse, when Kjell and I are connected we discover that we are being conferenced into a committee hearing, and that our participation will be considered testimony. I’m furious that the office of public affairs has not given me warning that I will be testifying before a committee of the people who oversee NASA and determine its funding. But I have to set aside that reaction and pretend to be prepared.

  Kjell and I answer questions about what we’re doing on station—we describe the biomedical experiments we are taking part in and talk about growing lettuce. One representative points out that we are in a “difficult geopolitical situation” with the Russians and wants to know whether we share all of our data with our Russian colleagues.

  I explain that the international cooperation on the space station is its strength. “I was up here as the only American with two Russian guys for six weeks this summer,” I tell him, “and if something had happened to me, I would have counted on them for my life. We have a great relationship, and I think the international aspect of this program has been one of its highlights.”

  One of the representatives on the committee, Dr. Brian Babin, happens t
o be a dentist, and the Johnson Space Center is in his congressional district. He is very curious about our oral health; we assure him that we brush and floss regularly. The last question is about Mars—a representative from Colorado points out that the planets will be lined up advantageously for a voyage in 2033. “Do you guys think that’s feasible?” he asks.

  I tell him I personally think it’s feasible, and that the most difficult part of getting to Mars is the money. He knows what I mean without my having to spell it out—we can do it if his committee gives NASA the funding. “I think it’s a trip that is worth the investment,” I say. “I think there are things tangible and intangible we get from investing in spaceflight, and I think Mars is a great goal for us. And I definitely think it’s achievable.”

  —

  A COUPLE OF weeks later, we are eating breakfast when a fire alarm sounds. Even though we have had many false alarms over the time I’ve been here, this is still a sound that captures our full attention. It takes us only a few minutes to trace the alarm to the European module, where a biology experiment with rotating incubators is showing a slightly elevated carbon monoxide level. We power down the experiment and confirm that there are no elevated readings anywhere else in the station. We sample the experiment to see if there are signs of combustion. There are. It’s a real fire.

  I always find the alarms entertaining in a strange way, unless they happen in the middle of the night and wake me up. Then I hate them. Alarms are a good reminder of the risk we live with and also a chance to review and practice our responses. In this case, the fire alarm does reveal an error in the procedure, which we later fix.

  —

  ON DECEMBER 6, a Cygnus resupply launches successfully. This is the first flight of an enhanced Cygnus with an extended pressurized module, which allows it to carry 25 percent more cargo. The module is named Deke Slayton II after one of the Mercury astronauts (the first Deke Slayton Cygnus blew up on launch the previous year). In addition to the regular supplies of food, clothes, oxygen, and other consumables, Cygnus is also carrying experiments and supplies to support research in biology, physics, medicine, and Earth science. It’s also carrying a microsatellite deployer and the first microsatellite to be deployed from ISS. And, important only to me, on board is a gorilla suit sent by my brother to replace the one lost on SpaceX. Once Cygnus safely reaches orbit—a stage we no longer take for granted after all the disasters earlier this year—Kjell captures it with the robot arm, his first time doing so. This was supposed to be my turn, but I decided to let Kjell do it, which meant giving up my last chance to grab a free-flying satellite, one of the few things I’ve never done in space.

  A few days later, on December 11, we gather to say good-bye to Kjell, Kimiya, and Oleg. I remember when they arrived here about five months ago, which seems like another lifetime. Kjell and Kimiya, who showed up like helpless baby birds, are leaving as soaring eagles. They are now seasoned space flyers who can move around the station with ease, fix hardware of all kinds, run science experiments across multiple disciplines, and generally handle anything that comes their way without my help. It’s a rare vantage point I have of their time here. I’ve known at some level how much astronauts learn and improve over the course of a single long-duration mission, but it’s another thing entirely to witness it. I say good-bye knowing I still have three months ahead of me. I’ll miss them.

  —

  YURI MALENCHENKO, Tim Kopra, and Tim Peake launch from Baikonur on December 15 at eleven a.m. our time and dock after a six-and-a-half-hour trip. I watch from the Cupola as they approach us, the bulbous black-and-white Soyuz with its solar panels spread like an insect’s wings, a sight I never quite get used to. The capsule starts out so tiny it looks like a toy, like a scale model of itself, at times appearing to be on fire as the sunlight reflects off its surface. But then it gets bigger and bigger, slowly revealing itself to be a full-size spacecraft.

  As I watch it get closer, I start to feel that something about the approach isn’t quite right, the angle or speed or both. The Soyuz is too far forward from its docking port. Just a few meters away from the station, the Soyuz stops by firing its braking thrusters toward us, to hold its position. This is not normal.

  The Soyuz thrusters are blowing unburned propellant at the Cupola windows, so I hurry to close the shutters. Beads of the stuff bounce around between the window and the shutters, a strange and alarming sight. I rush down to the Russian service module to find out from Sergey and Misha what’s going on.

  “They had failure in automatic docking system,” Sergey tells me. No one knows why. Yuri, the Soyuz commander, takes over manual control, and after spending a few minutes getting realigned with the docking port, he guides the craft in successfully, just nine minutes behind schedule. This is a great example of why we train so much for things that are unlikely to happen. The automated system is generally reliable, but a failure could cost the crew their lives if someone isn’t ready to take over.

  After a leak check, which always seems to take longer than it should—a couple of hours this time—we open the hatch and welcome our three new crewmates aboard. As always, their first day is a full one. Throughout, I’m aware that this is the last time I will introduce new people to space, and it gives me a strangely sad feeling, a kind of pre-nostalgia.

  I don’t know Yuri especially well, though he is one of the most experienced space travelers in history. He has a reputation for being technically brilliant, and his handling of this emergency manual docking will likely only add to that reputation. He has flown in space five times, including a long-duration mission on Mir, a space shuttle mission, and three previous long-duration missions on the International Space Station for a total of 641 days in space. He also has the distinction of being the only person to have gotten married while in space—on his first ISS mission, in 2003, he and his bride, Ekaterina, exchanged vows via videoconference while her friends and family gathered around her at home in Houston. (Knowing Yuri, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t crazy about this idea, but he went along with it anyway.) On his fourth flight, in 2008, Yuri’s Soyuz landed so far from his intended touchdown point, the local Kazakh farmers who came upon his steaming spacecraft had no idea what it was. When he and his two female crewmates, Peggy Whitson and Yi So-yeon, emerged from the capsule, the Kazakhs mistook him for an alien god who had come from space with his own supply of women. Had the rescue forces not arrived, I suspect the farmers would have appointed him their leader.

  Tim Kopra was an Army aviator and engineer before joining NASA in the 2000 class. He went to West Point and is a colonel in the Army. He also has multiple master’s degrees—one in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech, one in strategic studies from the Army War College, and one in business administration from a joint program between Columbia University and the London Business School. He’s been an astronaut for fifteen years, but this is only his second time in space. He flew one mission on ISS in 2009 that was unusually short—just more than a month. He had been scheduled for a second mission in 2011 on the space shuttle, but a few weeks before the launch he fell off his bike and broke his hip.

  Tim Peake was a helicopter test pilot in the United Kingdom until he became the first official British astronaut chosen by the European Space Agency. This is his maiden voyage to space, making him the only rookie on the crew. For the UK, Tim is sort of their Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard rolled into one. That’s a lot to live up to, but as our mission together goes on, I will come to find that he is more than up to it.

  One of the first things Tim Peake does when he gets on board is to open up a package of bonus food that came with him, select a BLT sandwich (a “bacon sarnie” in British English), and eat it, pieces of bacon floating out tantalizingly in every direction. Tim doesn’t realize that this sandwich, from the European Space Agency, is not available to the rest of us. We haven’t had a proper sandwich in months (for me, nine months), so watching him eat it is a very special form of torture. When he notices us eyeballing hi
s sarnie, Tim offers Misha and me bites. Afterward, we watch him finish eating, salivating like two dogs on steak night.

  As always with newcomers to the space station, Tim and Tim are as awkward and clumsy as toddlers. Sometimes when I want to help one of them get to where he needs to be, or want to get one of them out of the way quickly, I find it’s easiest to physically grab him by the shoulders or the hips and move him around in space the way I’d move a bulky piece of cargo. Neither of them seems to mind.

  The next day, I hear during the daily planning conference that we have a problem. The mobile transporter is stuck—it is attached to the CETA cart I worked on during my second spacewalk with Kjell. Flight controllers had started to move it to a different work site near the center of the truss so the robotic arm would be in position to perform some maintenance activities before the new Progress arrives next week. But it quickly became stuck in a position that makes dockings impossible for future visiting vehicles. The moment I hear these words, my heart sinks. I immediately know what went wrong: when I was working on the CETA cart, I must have inadvertently locked the brakes while tying down the brake handles.

  “I think I know who screwed that up,” I tell Houston.

  Later, I get on the phone with the flight director and tell her I’m almost certain about the brake handle.

  There is a pause on the other end of the connection. “How certain are you?” she asks.

  “Very certain,” I say. I know what my answer will mean: I will have to do an unplanned spacewalk before the Progress can dock, and it’s launching a week from tomorrow. We’ll have a terrifyingly short period of time to prepare, both in space and on Earth.

  It’s important to me to admit mistakes immediately, and I don’t make excuses. But I think to myself that I should not have been asked to do that task in the first place when I couldn’t give it the proper amount of attention. Working with the cart had been an afterthought, and there is no place for afterthoughts when you’re outside in space.