Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  49. Visible in this photograph of the EMU is the SAFER unit. Courtesy NASA.

  Strapped below the EMU backpack is the SAFER unit. Invented by a team at Lockheed Martin, which included Skylab astronaut Joe Kerwin, SAFER stands for “Simplified Air for EVA Rescue.” It is a self-contained jet pack. While each spacewalking astronaut uses a tether to clip themselves to the station, there are times when they have to unhook while transiting from one place to another. If an astronaut should lose grip of the station and begin drifting away, the pack can be activated with a joystick controller, which can be unstowed very quickly from the pack’s right side.

  Unlike the Manned Maneuvering Unit, the SAFER unit is strictly for emergency use. To date, the only times it has ever been activated were during its test missions. A prototype version of SAFER was first flown on STS-64. A production version was tested on STS-86 by Scott Parazynski, but it failed to work when a pyrotechnic charge designed to open the path for fuel to the thruster ports didn’t fire. The pack was a dud. Thankfully, the test was conducted with Parazynski’s feet firmly attached to the shuttle’s RMS, so there was no risk of him floating away. The bugs were finally worked out, and the pack was successfully flight-tested on STS-92.

  The Orlan suits aboard the ISS are designed to use SAFER as well. Modifications were also done to the Orlan helmets to allow them to use the EMU helmet cameras. Both the EMU and the Orlan can use each others’ airlocks, but this is only done in emergencies.

  Once outside, the astronauts clip on a special tool “belt.” Rather than being a belt worn around the waist, however, the large metal bracket to which the tools are attached connects at three points, one on the chest pack and two on the torso. The tools themselves are suspended from the belt in a position slightly below and in front of the chest pack, where they can be seen by the astronaut wearing them.

  The tools at an EMU astronaut’s disposal would make actor Tim Allen of the television show Home Improvement jealous. The Russians like to joke about the EMU by saying “too many tools,” compared to what the Orlan has at its disposal. Having a lot of tools may seem like overkill, but it comes in handy.

  The primary device is the pistol-grip tool. At a glance, it looks similar to a cordless drill or a NASCAR impact wrench, and it is powered by a rechargeable battery pack. Most of the ISS assembly tasks involved either removal of launch locks from modules or bolting items together. With this power tool, an astronaut can set how much torque to apply and how many revolutions to turn a screw.

  The fastener attachments on the ISS were designed so that if a screw were loosened to remove a launch lock, the launch lock would stay attached in its bracket and not float away free. For jobs that require a more precise touch or the tightening of bolts in spots too cramped for the pistol-grip tool, astronauts can use a handheld ratchet. This tool is similar in design to a standard half-inch ratchet, but it is designed to work with gloved hands. Both the ratchet and the pistol-grip tool have rings on their ends so that they can be secured to the tool belt’s tethers.

  Another tool used from time to time is a caulking gun. The device was originally designed for application of tile filler material during repairs to the shuttle’s thermal protection system, but it can be loaded with other materials as well, such as grease for bearings. To collect loose items in orbit, each astronaut was also equipped with one or more cloth tool bags with drawstrings. Since an item could potentially become debris that was free to float anywhere if it were let go of, mission procedures called for removed items like launch locks or material samples to be placed inside the bags.

  EVA Training

  Most astronauts who have joined NASA during the shuttle program have some EVA training since every shuttle mission included at least two qualified spacewalkers and a set of EMUs for emergency use. But for those astronauts who focus primarily in EVAs or are assigned to ISS missions, they received more-specialized training.

  In the 1990s Scott Parazynski and engineers on the ground created the EVA Skills Development Program. This program taught spacewalkers everything from how to communicate during an EVA in a common language to the proper procedures for movement, tool usage, and handling certain types of equipment. The training was beneficial since everyone got used to working on the same page. It also helped to minimize the development of bad habits and to maximize productivity.

  To help with hands-on EVA training, JSC has two main facilities at its disposal. The first is the Sonny Carter Training Facility, Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), located near JSC. It was a replacement for NASA’s smaller NBLs since a larger facility was needed to work with the massive assemblies planned for the ISS. It is named for astronaut Sonny Carter, who was tragically killed in a commercial airliner crash in 1991. In the NBL, astronauts wear similar equipment to what they use on orbit, and safety divers accompany them to their work sites. While maneuvering their tools, the trainees use lightweight mock-ups, which they hand off to the safety divers for the real (and heavier) pieces of equipment to do their tasks. While an astronaut wearing a properly weighted suit is neutrally buoyant, their bodies are not weightless in the suit, so the training runs can be uncomfortable sometimes, depending on their orientation. The shuttle EMU’s arms also drape out to the sides in a position more natural for zero gravity, but the arm position can sometimes cause discomfort in neutral-buoyancy training. It isn’t uncommon for astronauts to develop arm and shoulder pain during a long training run if they are on their sides or inverted. The training can also be brutal to the hands, given the thickness of the gloves.

  Astronauts training for a specific space walk could spend two or three training sessions a week, each lasting many hours in the pool. The experience gained during these runs outweighs the physical discomfort, though. Training runs are monitored closely in a control center at the facility. Should an astronaut or a diver develop a problem, they can be pulled out quickly by the safety crews. The facility has a hyperbaric chamber on standby for emergency use and properly trained medical support personnel at its disposal.

  The second training aid is JSC’s virtual reality laboratory, where astronauts can conduct dry runs of their space walks while wearing normal clothes. While sitting in swivel chairs, they don a torso unit with an EMU chest pack mock-up and a set of special gloves and goggles that allow them to see a three-dimensional, computer-generated world. To an outside observer, training astronauts look like they are grasping for things in midair, but the astronauts in the virtual reality environment see something very close to what they would see on orbit. While the NBL helps to teach the mechanics and tasks of specific EVAs, the virtual reality lab acts as a way to help polish the mission procedures further without the time, personnel, and expense required for NBL training sessions. But even as good as virtual reality is, it likely will never completely replace NBL training.

  Even with all the skills and training procedures, preparation doesn’t end there, as the astronauts study the equipment they are assigned to work on. So if a problem develops with a system not powering up properly, an astronaut doing an EVA can help troubleshoot the problem more quickly since he or she is typically on-site or close by. This came in handy when the SSRMS was hooked up during an EVA on STS-100, as it didn’t power up at all when the systems were tested. The spacewalkers outside knew that they had done their tasks properly, so they moved to an area that had been hooked up on a previous mission and tested the electrical connections there. Sure enough, after unhooking and rehooking a couple of the connectors, the problem was fixed, and the SSRMS powered up normally.

  Hail Damage

  Sunita Williams set many records during her time in orbit both as part of her official duties and during other activities. This included surpassing Shannon Lucid’s spaceflight duration record from Mir. Williams also ran the 2007 Boston Marathon. She was listed as an official entrant; when the starter gun went off on Earth, Williams ran the 26.2-mile course, with the station’s treadmill adjusting its resistance at the proper distance points. She completed
the event in four hours and twenty-four minutes, with her crewmates acting as support with drink bottles and encouragement.

  At KSC, STS-117 was scheduled to launch in mid-March, when a severe hail storm damaged the foam on the shuttle’s ET. So Atlantis was rolled back into the vehicle assembly building, and engineers got to work patching the dents. This resulted in a three-month delay for the mission. Sunita Williams was scheduled to exchange places with Clay Anderson on STS-118. Keeping the original mission order would have run the risk of putting Williams too close to her cumulative radiation exposure limit. Exceeding the limit would have jeopardized her chances of doing another ISS mission later in her career, so Clay Anderson was moved up to the STS-117 crew.

  Anderson was ready, as he had been involved in ISS training for several years. Originally, Anderson had trained with cosmonaut Aleksandr Lazutkin as part of the same crew. Unfortunately, Lazutkin suffered a heart attack and had to leave the cosmonaut program after having lived through the Mir fire, the Progress collision, and the other problems caused by Mir’s advanced age. Anderson was very sad to see his colleague retire before he got a chance to fly a second trip into space, one that promised to be less eventful than Lazutkin’s previous space flight. The loss of Lazutkin also meant that Anderson had to be assigned to a different crew on a later mission assignment.

  Language Training

  With the ability to read and speak Russian being a requirement among astronauts assigned to ISS duties, NASA made some changes in how its employees learned the language since the missions to Mir. During the later stages of the Shuttle-Mir Program, NASA began setting up a language training center at JSC so that their people could learn what they needed to without having to attend classes elsewhere. Language studies in English for visiting Russian and Japanese personnel were also set up, since both countries were sending people to Houston for astronaut training and ISS support work.

  One of the NASA people involved with development of the language center was Susan Anderson, who, at the time, was a member of the Astronaut Training Office. Her husband, Clay Anderson, worked as an engineer at JSC before his selection as an astronaut in 1998. Due to the potential conflict of interest with having a member of the training office married to an astronaut, Susan transferred to NASA’s education department since she had been a high school teacher before joining the agency.

  Susan Anderson explained, “For the person who is just traveling over there for a business meeting and [who] doesn’t need to be in intensive negotiation, the [Defense Language Institute] method is probably fine because a lot of our folks are very intense and they can learn something very quickly. But for the level that [people] needed to perform at on a regular basis, for our upper management involved with the Shuttle-Mir Program, with [astronauts] living on board the Mir, with training over in Star City and so forth, it was quite necessary for us to have a more extensive program.”

  Anderson further explains how, for ISS astronauts, language training typically continued once they were in Russia: “When we would send our folks over to Russia for training, they were also providing Russian-language training. So we learned how to integrate the two programs, because we have Russian-language instructors in the United States and you have Russian-language instructors in Russia, they might teach a little bit differently. And so we developed an integrated relationship. They don’t teach in the same methodology, but they keep one another informed of the progress of the students.” This type of integration worked well, especially if a student might need some additional education in a specific aspect of the Russian language. While the system wasn’t fully set up by the time Expedition 1 flew to the ISS, the crews after Expedition 3 got the full benefit of the new program.

  Never Give Up, Never Surrender

  Clay Anderson’s path to orbit was a study in perseverance. He had known from a young age that he wanted to be an astronaut, having seen Apollo 8’s mission to the moon as a child growing up in Ashland, Nebraska. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father worked for the Nebraska Department of Roads as a highway engineer. Both parents taught Clay and his siblings to be well rounded in their education and experiences, as all three of the Anderson children studied well in school, learned to play musical instruments, and were involved in sports. Clay Anderson played basketball in college and became an NCAA Division 1 basketball referee for a time. He earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from Hastings College and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University. Prior to his master’s degree, Anderson also was accepted for an internship working at JSC for two summers. Upon graduation Clay Anderson became an engineer at JSC, doing work in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division before moving on to assignments in the Mission Operations Directorate, which included being leader of the team that helped plan the launch trajectories for the Galileo space probe to Jupiter.

  All during this period, Anderson regularly submitted updates to his astronaut application every two years and was rejected every time. One might figure that after four, five, or even six applications, one might give up and decide that it was not in the cards. Clay Anderson applied fifteen times before he was granted an interview in 1996. While he didn’t get selected that year, he resubmitted in 1998, as he knew his chances were better having made it to the interview stage previously. It turns out his instincts were correct, as the Nebraska native joined the 1998 class of ASCANs (astronaut candidates).

  Each astronaut class has a name. Some are mundane, while others are humorous. But all have a story. The tradition of naming astronaut classes typically has the previous class selecting the name of the incoming class in much the same way that established pilots in the military give a newcomer his nickname or call sign. For instance, the 1996 astronaut class was known as the Sardines since they were the biggest astronaut class to date.

  With that many astronauts already in the program, it looked like flights for newcomers might be few and far between. So flightless birds became the theme of the 1998 class. The Sardines were going to name the newcomers the Dodos since the mascot was a flightless bird and an extinct one at that. But members of the 1998 class with foreknowledge of how the naming process went decided to mount a preemptive strike. The group voted to call themselves the Penguins; in order to drive home the point, the night before the 1998 class officially reported to JSC, members who were already JSC employees decorated the classroom with all sorts of penguin memorabilia before anyone from the 1996 class caught on. So the 1998 class officially became known as the Penguins.

  Clay Anderson’s assignment to the astronaut corps got him involved in ISS training after a few years of working on electrical system designs. This involved language training and regular visits to Russia, in addition to the work at JSC. Anderson was away from his Houston home for six months of each year during the three and a half years he spent training before his ISS flight, but both he and Susan Anderson managed to stay in touch the whole time through regular emails, phone calls, and other forms of contact. The pair also managed to raise two healthy and active kids in the process, a son named Cole and a daughter named Sutton.

  Bumping up a crewmember from one shuttle mission to an earlier one had never been done before, and it required a bit of reshuffling both at home and at work. But the STS-117 support staff made the process as smooth as possible for a relatively last-minute switch. Once STS-117 launched, Anderson made himself useful by acting as an assistant to the flight crew, doing jobs in whatever capacity was needed, since even with assigned tasks, things can be rather busy when a shuttle reaches orbit.

  One important change brought about by the crew switch involved scheduled EVAs for Anderson. On STS-118 his first two EVAs were to be conducted with Rick Mastracchio. After Endeavour left, he was scheduled to perform a staged EVA with Fyodor Yurchikhin to remove and release the Early Ammonia Servicer unit. With the rescheduled flights, Anderson and Yurchikhin would have to perform their staged EVA prior to STS-118’s arrival. This would be the first time two EVA rookies
, including one Russian, would be performing such a task with another Russian inside operating the arm completely solo.

  This revised tasking caused some friction between the Expedition 15 crew and NASA management. Before Expedition 15 launched into orbit, a last-minute test was arranged for Anderson and Yurchikhin in the virtual reality lab at JSC while more than the typical number of managers and observers watched. The test was different from the one originally planned, but the two men did their job well and drove home the point that at least they knew what they were doing and could execute their tasks properly, even if NASA management might not have had the same confidence. No changes were made to the EVAs.

  ISS Computer Failure

  The space shuttle Atlantis was finally ready to fly on 8 June 2007 on mission STS-117. In its cargo bay was the S3 and S4 truss segment with the station’s third set of solar arrays. The mission launched as scheduled at 19:38 EDT into a clear, blue Florida sky. Atlantis docked with the ISS forty-seven hours and fifty-eight minutes later. The transfer of the new set of solar arrays went like clockwork as the station and shuttle crews utilized the SSRMS to transfer the new truss segment to its location on the port side of the truss. With the new arrays unfurled, the ISS was now double its 2003 width and in a symmetrical configuration, meaning orbital reboosts could once again take place without center-of-mass concerns.

  After the new arrays were hooked up to the power grid, a problem developed. On day seven of STS-117’s mission, the three primary computers on the Russian side of the station unexpectedly powered down, knocking out the station’s environmental control systems and orientation thrusters. Thankfully, the ISS didn’t lose total control, as its control-moment gyros were still operating and the shuttle was available to stabilize it as necessary. The computers were successfully restarted a few hours later, but they triggered a false fire alarm that woke the crew during a sleep period.