Endurance

by Scott Kelly

  I’ve avoided counting down this whole year. I’m surprised that the single digits have crept up on me, so it seems my strategy has worked. Nine days isn’t long at all.

  “Scott,” Misha says with a note of excitement in his voice, “we did it!”

  “Misha,” I answer, “we had no choice!”

  Sergey, Misha, and I will do a few Soyuz training sessions together so we will be ready for our descent. Misha, who will serve as flight engineer 1, needs to refresh his training for serving as Sergey’s backup; it’s been a long time.

  We start packing up our things and getting organized to leave. I have to figure out what is coming back with me on Soyuz—a small package of no more than a pound or so, including the gold pendants for Amiko, Samantha, and Charlotte and silver versions for my crew secretary Brooke Heathman, my scheduler Jennifer James, and my Russian instructor Elena Hansen. A larger allotment of things can come back on SpaceX later in the spring. I need to clean out my crew quarters thoroughly so it will be fresh for the next person. Because of the way stuff can float around in space, I have to clean the walls, ceiling, and floor. I have to disassemble the small room and vacuum out the vents—those are especially gross, as they are covered with a year of dust. I also hide a plastic roach for my successor Jeff Williams to find.

  Amiko tells me she’s had someone come by to check on the pool and hot tub—the pool heater broke partway through my mission and she hadn’t noticed until she started putting everything in order for my return. She knows I have been thinking about how great it will be to jump in the pool. She asks me to send a list of the things I want her to have on hand when I get back. Typing the list makes me think about home even more: the sheets of my bed, the shower, the pool and hot tub in the backyard. I’ve spent this entire year trying not to long for home, and now I’m putting myself there deliberately. It feels very strange.

  I email her a list:

  Subject: Stuff I Want at Home

  Gatorade (the old-school green kind)

  Dogfish Head 60 Minute India Pale Ale

  And a six-pack of Miller High Life (remember I said I had a craving for that)

  Green seedless grapes

  Strawberries

  Salad stuff

  Cabernet

  La Crema Chardonnay

  Bottled water

  Often when I do interviews and press events from space, I’m asked what I miss about Earth. I have a few answers I always reach for that make sense in any context: I mention rain, spending time with my family, relaxing at home. Those are always true. But throughout the day, from moment to moment, I’m aware of missing all sorts of random things that don’t even necessarily rise to the surface of my consciousness.

  I miss cooking. I miss chopping fresh food, the smell vegetables give up when you first slice into them. I miss the smell of the unwashed skins of fruit, the sight of fresh produce piled high in grocery stores. I miss grocery stores, the shelves of bright colors and the glossy tile floors and the strangers wandering the aisles. I miss people. I miss the experience of meeting new people and getting to know them, learning about a life different from my own, hearing about things people experienced that I haven’t. I miss the sound of children playing, which always sounds the same no matter their language. I miss the sound of people talking and laughing in another room. I miss rooms. I miss doors and door frames and the creak of wood floorboards when people walk around in old buildings. I miss sitting on my couch, sitting on a chair, sitting on a bar stool. I miss the feeling of resting after opposing gravity all day. I miss the rustle of papers, the flap of book pages turning. I miss drinking from a glass. I miss setting things down on a table and having them stay there. I miss the sudden chill of wind on my back, the warmth of sun on my face. I miss showers. I miss running water in all its forms: washing my face, washing my hands. I miss sleeping in a bed—the feel of sheets, the heft of a comforter, the welcoming curve of a pillow. I miss the colors of clouds at different times of day and the variety of sunrises and sunsets on Earth.

  I also think about what I’ll miss about this place when I’m back on Earth. It’s a strange feeling, this nostalgia in advance, nostalgia for things I’m still experiencing every day and that often, right now, annoy me. I know I will miss the friendship and camaraderie of the fourteen people I have flown with on this yearlong mission. I’ll miss the view of Earth from the Cupola. I know I will miss the sense that I’m surviving by my wits, the sense that life-threatening challenges could come along and that I will rise to meet them, that every single thing I do is important, that every day could be my last.

  —

  PACKING UP to leave space is strange. A lot of stuff goes in the trash, which means stowing it in the Cygnus that will burn up in the atmosphere later this month. I throw out a lot of unused clothes—my challenge to myself to use as few clothes as possible has been a success, and there is a duffel bag’s worth of T-shirts, sweatshirts, underwear, socks, and pants left over to prove it.

  On the weekend, I find the time to take pictures of a bunch of stuff people have asked me to bring—T-shirts, hats with logos, photographs, artwork, jewelry. I gather it all up and take it to the Cupola. As I open the shutters, I catch a glimpse of tawny sand, and I instantly know from the color and texture exactly where we are above the planet: the Somali plains just north of Mogadishu. In one way it’s satisfying to feel like I know the planet with such intimacy. In another way, it makes me feel like I’ve definitely been up here too long.

  One by one, I take the items I’ve brought up here for people and float them against the backdrop of the Earth to snap a picture of each. It’s not hard or even that time-consuming, but it’s the kind of thing I never felt like doing and that could always be put off until later…until now.

  There is another thing I wanted to do that I haven’t quite found the right time for. I’ve been thinking about the whole arc of my life that brought me here, and I always think about what it meant to me to read The Right Stuff as a young man. I feel certain that I wouldn’t have done any of the things I have if I hadn’t read that book—if Tom Wolfe hadn’t written it. On a quiet Saturday afternoon, I call Tom Wolfe to thank him. He sounds truly amazed to hear from me. I tell him we’re passing over the Indian Ocean, how fast we’re going, how our communication system works. We talk about books and about New York and about what I plan to do first when I get back (jump into my swimming pool). We agree to have lunch when I’m back on Earth, and that’s now one of the things I’m looking forward to most.

  On February 29, 2016, I hand over command of the International Space Station to Tim Kopra. Tomorrow I will leave the station and return to Earth.

  20

  March 1, 2016

  Dreamed I was doing a spacewalk with my brother. At first we went outside in our normal clothes, because you could do that if it was a short period of time. Then we went inside and he put on an American spacesuit and I put on a Russian one, the Orlan. I liked the Orlan suit, but I was concerned that I had not trained in it. We went back out of the airlock to find the outside of the space station covered in snow, like a winter wonderland.

  THE SIX OF US are gathered in the Russian segment, having another awkward photo op floating in front of the Soyuz hatch. When it’s time, Sergey, Misha, and I each hug Tim, Tim, and Yuri and say our good-byes. They snap pictures of us as we float through the hatch. I know from a great deal of experience that it’s an odd feeling to say good-bye from that side, knowing that you will be staying behind in space while your friends return to Earth. After having spent so much time together in such close quarters, we’ve now closed a door between us that won’t open again.

  Just before Sergey closes the hatch behind us, Misha turns and reaches through to touch the wall of the space station one last time. He gives it a pat, the way you’d pat a horse. I know he’s thinking he might not be here again and he’s feeling nostalgia for this place that has meant so much to him.

  If the process of getting up to space is violen
t and uncomfortable, the process of coming back down is even more so. Descending in the Soyuz capsule is one of the most dangerous moments of this year, and it will be one of the most physically grueling. Earth’s atmosphere is naturally resistant to objects entering from space. Moving at the high speed of orbit, any object will create friction with the air—enough friction that most objects simply burn up from the heat. This is a fact that generally works to our advantage, as it protects the planet from the many meteoroids and orbital debris that would otherwise rain down unexpectedly. And we take advantage of it when we fill visiting vehicles with trash and then set them loose to burn up in the atmosphere. But it’s also what makes a return from space so difficult and dangerous. The three of us must survive a fall through the atmosphere that will create temperatures up to three thousand degrees and up to 4 g’s of deceleration. The atmosphere seems designed to kill us, but the Soyuz capsule, and the procedures we go through, are designed to keep us alive.

  The return to Earth will take about three and a half hours, with many steps we must get through successfully. After pushing away from the station, we will fire the engine to slow us slightly and ease our way into the upper layers of the atmosphere at just the right speed and angle to start our descent. If our approach is too steep, we could fall too fast and be killed by excessive heat or deceleration. If it’s too shallow, we could skip off the surface of the atmosphere like a rock thrown at a still lake, only to later enter much more steeply, likely with catastrophic consequences. Assuming our deorbit burn goes as planned, the atmosphere will do most of the work of slowing us down, while the heat shield will (we hope) keep the temperatures from killing us, the parachute will (we hope) slow our descent once we are within ten kilometers, and then the soft landing rockets will (we hope) fire to further slow our descent in the seconds before we hit the ground. Many things need to happen perfectly or we will be dead.

  Sergey has already spent days stowing the cargo we will be bringing with us on the Soyuz—our small packages of personal items, water samples, blood and saliva for the human studies. We pack up some trash to be disposed of in the habitation module of the Soyuz, and I include the head of the gorilla suit, since I don’t want to be held responsible for any future Space Gorilla antics. Most of the storage space in the capsule is devoted to things we hope we never have to use: the radio, compass, machete, and cold-weather survival gear in case we land off course and must wait for the rescue forces.

  Because our cardiovascular systems have not had to oppose gravity all this time, they have become weakened and we will suffer from symptoms of low blood pressure on our return to Earth. One of the things we do to counteract this is fluid loading—ingesting water and salt to try to increase our plasma volume before we return. The Russians and the Americans have different philosophies about the best fluid-loading protocols. NASA gives us a range of options that include chicken broth, a combination of salt tablets and water, and Astro-Ade, a rehydration drink developed specifically for astronauts. The Russians prefer more salt and less liquid, in part because they prefer not to use the diaper during reentry. Having figured out what worked for me on my previous flights, I stick to drinking lots of water and wearing the diaper.

  I struggle into my Sokol suit, which is even harder to get into here than it was in Baikonur, where gravity kept things still and I had suit technicians to help me. We used the suits once when we relocated the Soyuz before Gennady left, and I put mine on again a few days ago for the fit check—other than that, it’s been waiting for me patiently in the habitation compartment of the Soyuz for a year. As I pull the neck ring up over my head, I try to remember the day I put this suit on for launch, a day when I’d eaten fresh food for breakfast, had taken a shower, and had gotten to see my family. I also saw a lot of other people that day, people everywhere—hundreds altogether, some of them strangers I’d never seen before and would never see again. That is the part that seems strangest now. Everything about that day seems distant to me, like a movie I saw once about someone else.

  I’m preparing to climb into the capsule for the ride home, contemplating packing myself into that tiny space again. We float into the center section of the Soyuz, the descent capsule, one by one. First Misha squeezes his tall frame in, closing the hatch partially behind him in order to struggle into the left seat. Misha opens the hatch so I can float down; then I squeeze myself past the hatch, hoping that none of the hardware on my suit scratches up the hatch seal. I get into the center seat, close the hatch to get it out of the way, then awkwardly shimmy myself over to the right seat. Once I’m in, I open the hatch again, and Sergey settles himself into the center seat. We sit with our knees pressed up to our chests.

  We are in the seat liners that were custom molded to fit our bodies, and they are more important now than they were on launch day. We will go from 17,500 miles per hour to a hard zero in less than thirty minutes, and the seats, along with many other parts of the Soyuz, must work as designed to keep us on the winning side of a battle against the forces of nature. We strap ourselves in as best we can using the five-point restraints, easier said than done when the straps are floating around us and any tiny force pushes us away from the seats. It’s hard to get secured very tightly, but once we are hurtling toward Earth, the full force of deceleration will crush us down into our seats, making it easier to fully tighten our straps.

  A command from mission control in Moscow opens the hooks that hold the Soyuz to the ISS, and soon after, spring-force plungers nudge us away from the station. Both of these processes are so gentle that we don’t feel or hear them. We are now moving a couple of inches per second relative to the station, though still in orbit with it. Once we are a safe distance away, we use the Soyuz thrusters to push us farther from the ISS.

  Now there is more waiting. We don’t talk much. This squashed position creates excruciating pain in my knees, as it always has, and it’s warm in here. A cooling fan runs to circulate air within our suits, a low comforting whirr, but it’s not enough. I remember sitting in the right-hand seat of a different Soyuz, remarking to Misha that our lives without fan noise were over. That seems so long ago. Now, I can’t remember what it’s like to be in silence, and I yearn to experience it again.

  I find it hard to stay awake. I don’t know if I’m tired just from today or from the whole year. Sometimes you don’t feel how exhausting an experience has been until it’s over and you allow yourself to stop ignoring it. I look over at Sergey and Misha, and their eyes are closed. I close mine too. The sun rises; forty-five minutes later, the sun sets.

  When we get word from the ground that it’s time for the deorbit burn, we are instantly, completely awake. It’s important to get this part right. Sergey and Misha execute the burn perfectly, a four-and-a-half-minute firing of the braking engine, which will slow the Soyuz by 300 miles per hour. We are now in a twenty-five-minute free fall before we slam into Earth’s atmosphere.

  When it’s time to separate the crew module—the tiny, cone-shaped capsule we are sitting in—from the rest of the Soyuz, we hold our breaths. The three modules are exploded apart. Pieces of the habitation module and instrumentation compartment fly by the windows, some of them striking the sides of our spacecraft. None of us mentions it, but we all know that it was at this point in a Soyuz descent in 1971 that three cosmonauts lost their lives. A valve between the crew module and the orbital module opened during separation, depressurizing the cabin and asphyxiating the crew. Misha, Sergey, and I wear pressure suits that would protect us in the case of a similar accident, but this moment in the descent sequence is still one we are glad to put behind us.

  We feel gravity begin to return, first slowly, then with a vengeance. Soon everything is oddly heavy, too heavy—our checklists, our arms, our heads. My watch feels heavy on my wrist, and breathing gets harder as the g forces clamp down on my trachea. The capsule heats up, and flaming pieces of the heat shield fly by the window as it’s scorched black.

  We hear the wind noise building as the
thick air of the atmosphere rushes past the capsule, a sign that the parachute will soon be deployed. This is the only part of reentry that is completely automated, and we concentrate on the monitor, waiting for the indicator light to show that it worked. It won’t be long, maybe only a second or two, before we feel the jerk of the parachute, but we watch anyway. Everything now depends on one parachute, manufactured in an aging facility outside Moscow by similarly aging workers using quality standards inherited from the Soviet space program. After all I’ve experienced this year—the long days, the grueling spacewalks, living through the missed birthdays and celebrations, the struggles personal and professional—everything depends on that parachute. We are falling at the speed of sound. We fall and wait and watch.

  The chute catches us with a jerk, rolling and buffeting our capsule crazily through the sky. I’ve heard this experience compared to a train accident followed by a car accident followed by falling off your bike. I’ve described it myself as the sensation of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, while on fire. In the wrong frame of mind this would be terrifying, and from what I’ve heard some people who have experienced it have been terrified. But I love it. It’s like a carnival ride on steroids.

  Misha’s checklist comes loose from its tether and flies at my head. I reach up and grab it out of the air left-handed. The three of us look at one another with amazement.

  “Left-handed Super Bowl catch!” I shout, then quickly realize Sergey and Misha might not know what the Super Bowl is. This is not only a moment to revel in my athleticism; it’s also a good indication that the motion of the Soyuz must not be as crazy as it seems to us—a lot of the perceived motion is our vestibular systems overreacting to the force of gravity.

  After all the tumult of the descent, the minutes we spend drifting at the whim of the parachute are oddly calm. Later I will see a photograph taken of our Soyuz dangling under the white-and-orange parachute against the backdrop of a fluffy blanket of clouds. The heat shield is jettisoned, pulling off the burned window coverings. Sunlight streams in the window at my elbow as we watch the ground come closer and closer.