by Terry Virts
If even a small amount of ammonia were present in the atmosphere, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to remove. The only scrubber we had was our ammonia masks, so theoretically you could have an astronaut sit in a contaminated module, breathing the contaminant out of the air and into the mask filter, and over time enough of this scrubbing would lower the ammonia concentration, but as the poor astronaut sat there cleaning the air he would also be covered in ammonia, and convincing his fellow crewmates on the Russian segment to allow him back to their clean air would be problematic, to say the least. There would need to be some sort of shower and cleaning system to completely clean him up, which of course doesn’t exist in space. It would be a similar situation to soldiers in a chemical warfare environment, or the Soviet soldiers in the recent miniseries Chernobyl. Dealing with a toxic environment on Earth is difficult enough, but in space it would be nearly impossible. The reality is that an actual leak into the American segment would make a significant portion of the ISS uninhabitable, and if there were no crew there when the equipment broke down, there would be nobody to fix it.
A real ammonia leak would eventually lead to the slow death of the US half of the ISS, which would then lead to the end of the entire station. We knew this and spent our afternoon staring at each other, wondering out loud how long it would be before they sent us home, leaving the space station uninhabited and awaiting an untimely death.
In the midst of that unexpected and extreme situation, something extraordinary happened. If you have seen the news over the past decade, you may have noticed that there has been a bit of tension between Russia and the West: Ukraine civil war. Sanctions. Crimea. The shooting-down of a Dutch airliner in 2014. There was plenty of tension to go around. In that context, we received an unexpected radio call from one of the top officials in the Russian government: Mr. Dmitry Rogozin, who had actually walked me out to my Soyuz rocket on launch night. He was one of Mr. Putin’s top deputies and was right in the middle of the tension between Russia and the West. He told us that they would work with us. “Our American colleagues can stay as long as they need on our segment,” he said. “We will work through this emergency situation together.”
It was like a scene out of a space horror film; all the things that we had let go in the mad rush to escape the leak were floating about randomly, as if a ghost were carrying them.
This was an example of how people can and should work together—in space, on Earth, in a family, in a business relationship, or between nations. We were concerned about working through this potentially deadly problem without the ridiculous encumbrance of grandstanding politics. I considered my Russian crewmates to be my brothers and sisters, and I immensely enjoyed flying with them. The time I spent hanging out with them in the Russian service module, eating dinner after the work day, was a highlight of my time in space. And here we were, faced with a deadly situation in that same service module, working together to survive and save the station. I’m no idealist, and having spent thirty-plus years in the Air Force, I know that sometimes strength is required in international relations, but the way we handled that ammonia leak is the way things should be done down here on Earth.
Later that evening, we received a call from Houston. “Just kidding, it was a false alarm.” That was a huge false alarm. It turned out that some cosmic radiation had hit a computer, causing it to kick out bad data regarding the cooling system, and it took Houston hours to sort out what was really happening. Because that call from Houston had told us that it was a real leak, we all believed it—we knew that the folks in mission control were some of the best engineers in the world and that they would be 100 percent sure before making a call like that. So we were very relieved to get that call.
“False alarm” notwithstanding, they asked us to wear gas masks when we reopened the hatch and returned to the US segment to sample the atmosphere, “just in case.” Which made me chuckle. So a crewmate and I put our gas masks back on, ammonia detection equipment in hand, and floated down into an abandoned spaceship. It was like a scene out of a space horror film; all the things that we had let go in the mad rush to escape the leak were floating about randomly, as if a ghost were carrying them. They looked as if they had been drifting aimlessly for centuries, abandoned by a long-dead crew, even though it had only been a few hours. Luckily, the atmosphere was clear and our masks came off shortly after returning, and life on the station was back to business-as-usual within a day or so.
For me, the big lesson from this whole drama wasn’t how to improve spaceship cooling loop design or procedures. Or “Should we or shouldn’t we take our clothes off once on the Russian segment?” (My advice—don’t.) It was the example of how people should work together to solve important problems, leaving petty political bickering behind. That is exactly what we did and what the space program in general has done for many decades. The vacuum of space is a harsh and unforgiving environment, and it doesn’t care what country you are from or what your ideology is. Unless you approach spaceflight focused only on getting the job done and working as a team, you risk dying.
And that, my friends, is a lesson that we would do well to learn down here on our home planet.
It Was a Long 200 Days
Do ISS Astronauts Make Whoopee?
(What Everyone Wants to Ask)
The one question that everybody wants to know the answer to, but many are afraid to ask, is “Have you, uh, you know? Or has anybody? You know. . . . In space?”
To answer this, I’ll give the same answer I gave Neil deGrasse Tyson when I was a guest on his TV show at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The format of his show is to have a segment filmed in front of a live audience, then Neil talks informally with the audience off camera during intermission, and finally he comes back to finish the show. During the intermission segment, Neil turned to me and said, “Terry, come on, be honest, did you? Or has anybody?”
And my answer was . . .
Before I get to the answer, let’s just talk through logistics. The Soyuz is like you and your two best friends in the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle. It just ain’t gonna happen in that small space. There is literally NO privacy whatsoever. Also, you are in the Soyuz immediately after launch, and typically fly a four-orbit rendezvous, which means that it only takes six hours to get to the station. Much of that time is busy with procedures, and all of it is spent in your Sokol spacesuit, a big bulky pressure suit that takes ten minutes to get out of. Which renders the practicality of getting busy impossible. Even more important, nobody is in the mood during the few hours after leaving Earth. Your brain’s vestibular system is still shaking its head and asking itself, “What the heck just happened to me and where is gravity???!!!”
There is the possibility of a two-day rendezvous after launch, in which case you’d have some spare time to do the deed. Crews actually get out of their Sokol suits and slip into something more comfortable, like a polo shirt and Velcro-laden Bermuda shorts. But—and this is a big but—your brain’s vestibular system is still completely confused, which makes getting in the proper mood for said activities exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. What’s more, the Soyuz would be flying in a rotation mode, spinning like a chicken being roasted on a rotisserie spit, to prevent the sun’s energy from overheating one side. While in this rotation mode, your brain would feel even worse from the spinning. What’s more, if the crew is bouncing around inside and banging against the walls, the very tiny Soyuz would be knocked out of attitude, triggering an alarm, followed by a stern warning from mission control Moscow, in the Russian language no less. None of those things are conducive to . . .
The space station, on the other hand, is big. Very big. Larger than a 747 big. Plus there are only six or fewer of you there for half of the year, so one would think that there would be time for extracurricular activities.
The space shuttle, on the other hand, was a bit larger. It was more like you and six of your best friends in the kitchen, or maybe the kitchen and laundry room, for
two weeks. So . . . probably ain’t gonna happen. Shuttle flights had all of the same medical concerns as the Soyuz, though its missions were frequently longer than a week, which means the crew would get over their initial dizziness. Here’s the bottom line—the shuttle did fly 135 missions, and where there’s a will there’s a way, but I seriously doubt that anything interesting ever happened.
The space station, on the other hand, is big. Very big. Larger than a 747 big. Plus there are only six or fewer of you there for half of the year, so one would think that there would be time for extracurricular activities. And the aforementioned nausea and vestibular problems are gone after a few days. Everyone feels very normal and well adjusted for the vast majority of those six months.
The physics of this problem would be easily solvable. There are handrails in every corner of the ISS that are used by crews to move around using their hands and also to hold themselves in place with their feet. So, it’s pretty easy to stabilize yourself. And in weightlessness lots of things are possible. And people tend to be very creative, out of either desire or necessity. In fact, the possibilities of weightlessness and whoopie are really intriguing. So there is certainly nothing that would preclude it.
But at the end of the day, you are launching with people who are basically your siblings. So, I’ll reiterate what I said earlier: Probably ain’t gonna happen. As far as I know it hasn’t.
This was a very long buildup to my answer for Mr. deGrasse Tyson . . . “It was a long 200 days, Neil! And it’s good to be back on Earth!”
Dealing with a Dead Crewmember
If a Fellow Astronaut Expires
NASA is always planning for the unlikely in order to avert disaster. Virtually every contingency is thought of, trained, backed up, and mitigated. But at the end of the day, crews are human, and not only do people sometimes make mistakes, they don’t last forever. One change in crew demographics brings attention to this reality. The early astronauts in the 1960s were rarely over forty years old, but today we routinely fly people in their fifties and even occasionally in their sixties.
Which leads to the possibility that someone will die while in space, either in Earth orbit or during a mission to the Moon or Mars. Therefore, it is a perfectly logical question to ask what would happen to the body in such a situation. I don’t recall being specifically trained on this contingency—the coldhearted word NASA uses for an “off-nominal situation,” which is the NASA term for “something wrong.” But as astronauts we realized that this was a possibility, and though it wasn’t often discussed, I’m sure that my colleagues would handle this situation professionally and compassionately.
That being said, there are a lot of practical details to consider. First and foremost: What caused the death? If there were a fatal accident, or if one person who had a known medical condition died, then the medical situation would be well understood, and life on the station would go on after dealing with the body. However, if there were a serious problem on the spacecraft that killed the individual, such as an ammonia gas leak or toxic fumes, the first priority would be solving the malfunction to prevent more astronauts from suffering the same fate.
Even worse than someone having an untimely heart attack or breathing in toxic fumes would be if your fellow astronauts started dying from an unknown cause. That would definitely grab everyone’s attention and probably give the surviving crew a powerful motivation to return to Earth as soon as possible. Which, depending on the cause of the mystery deaths, might not be the best course of action. Think Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or any one of a thousand “infection from outer space destroys humanity” movies. It’s conceivable that an unknown plague affecting a crew in space would be dealt with by simply leaving the crew in space. They would have the rest of their lives to solve the mystery, if they were to have any hope of ever being allowed to return to Earth.
Regardless of the cause of death, there are some practical concerns that would need to be addressed. There are basically two ways to deal with a human body in space. One option is to give a burial at sea, as it were. The other option would be to return the body to Earth. Both of these options would be discussed among the crew in space, the family on the ground, and management on Earth. This decision would certainly be the hardest one any of those involved would ever make in their lives.
The burial-at-sea option would require taking the body out of the airlock on one final spacewalk and floating it off into space. A practical concern would be how to get the body outside. You would have one or two crewmembers in the airlock tethered to the deceased astronaut. They would take the body out of the hatch, release the tethers, and slowly push their comrade away in an aft and radial down direction—toward the back of the station and down toward the Earth. This would ensure that gravity and orbital mechanics would pull the body away from and below the station, eventually to burn up in the atmosphere. A lightweight, large-surface-area mechanism attached to the body would act as a sail, increasing the drag from Earth’s tenuous atmosphere and speeding up its orbital decay and inevitable re-entry.
If the calamity happened during transit to or from another planet, you would have to pick a direction that would keep the body from recontacting the spacecraft, and preferably keep it from interfering with the re-entry that the rest of the crew would perform when they got to their destination planet. If it occurred on the surface of the Moon or Mars and the body were to be left in place, you would have to find a suitable location outside for burial—the first extraterrestrial cemetery. I often show a photo of the Earth during my own talks and remark, “Every human in history was born and died down there on Earth.” When the first human dies on another planet, this anecdote will no longer be true.
Another question—how do you dress the deceased? You would certainly want the body contained, probably by at least two methods, to avoid a further mess. Initially, it would go into one of the body bags we have stored on the ISS for such a contingency. It could then be placed in a standard spacesuit, but this option would be highly undesirable. First, EMUs are expensive, there are only a few operational suits on board the station, and it would be really difficult to move an uncooperative person around in that giant suit. A better option would be to keep the individual in the body bag and then put that into a large storage bag, called MO-1 or MO-2 bags, about the size of a dishwasher. Using the deceased’s launch and entry suit from the Soyuz/Boeing/SpaceX capsule is another possibility. The problem is that those suits inflate in low pressure and so would be really difficult to get out of the airlock hatch. Think kid in snowsuit in the movie A Christmas Story.
A final burial-at-sea option would be to send the body outside alone, through an equipment airlock, without a crewmate in attendance. The body would be released robotically, in the same manner that space station astronauts launch small satellites. It would slowly fall away into the silent abyss, fading into the distance as it floated into the black sea of the universe, humanity’s first burial in outer space.
The other significant option is to bring the body back to Earth. This might be an appropriate course of action if the cause of death were undetermined but seemingly benign, or if the family so desired. In this case, the body would be placed into its launch and entry suit and then strapped into the capsule seat for the deorbit burn and landing. On the Soyuz each of the three crewmembers has their own custom-molded seat, so if the deceased had been the vehicle commander or flight engineer, their seat would have to be relocated to the second flight engineer position, where there aren’t many tasks to do during landing. This could prove impossible if rigor mortis set in and made it impossible to fit the body in the seat. A final intriguing option would be to put the body in a cargo vehicle. Most of the cargo ships that depart the ISS burn up in the atmosphere, full of trash, but the SpaceX Dragon actually splashes down in the ocean under parachute, and that would potentially be a better option to safely return a body to Earth rather than flying the deceased in his or her normal seat in the capsule.
Th
is is a grim topic, and thankfully no space traveler has yet died while in space. But if humans continue to leave Earth in the coming decades and centuries, it will eventually happen.
Robotic Crewmates
Remote Work Outside the ISS
Robotics has become a miracle field in the twenty-first century. Most manufacturing is accomplished by robots, drones are everywhere, military and emergency responders have robotic helpers for dangerous situations, and even some surgery is performed by robots. Progress in this field will continue to accelerate exponentially, and people at the end of the twenty-first century will look back at us and chuckle at how primitive our technology is today. But when I flew into space at the beginning of the century, flying a space robotic arm was still pretty cool.
Actually, there are multiple robotic arms in space. The shuttle had the original Canadarm, a six-joint manipulator built by, you guessed it, Canada. It was used since the early days of the shuttle program to pull satellites and equipment out of the payload bay (the shuttle’s cargo hold) and deploy them into space. It was also used to grapple free-flyers, orbital satellites that the shuttle would approach, grapple with its robotic arm, and either repair or stow in the payload bay for return to Earth. This was how the Hubble Space Telescope was repaired—grappled by the robotic arm, attached to the aft end of the shuttle, where spacewalking astronauts repaired and replaced its broken instruments, and then pulled out of the payload bay by the arm and released back into space, where it remains today, orbiting the Earth.
Later in the shuttle program, the arm was used to pull massive ISS modules out of the payload bay and hand them off to the station’s much larger arm, Canadarm2. Guess where that was made? This was one of my main tasks during STS-130, the only shuttle flight to bring up two station modules at once—Node 3 (“Tranquility,” the large living module) and the Cupola (the small, seven-windowed observation module). The Cupola was attached to Node 3 for launch, so my task was to pull that combination out of the shuttle and hand it off to my colleagues on the ISS who were waiting to grapple it with the big arm, after which they attached the whole assembly to an empty docking location on the Node 1 module.