SPACEWALK
A spacewalk is one of the pinnacles of human spaceflight. Even for professional astronauts, the opportunity to leave the space station and float above the Earth is a rare and exhilarating experience.
SPACEWALK
A spacewalk is one of the pinnacles of human spaceflight. Even for professional astronauts, the opportunity to leave the space station and float above the Earth is a rare and exhilarating experience.
It is best described by Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield:
“Nothing compares to being alone in the Universe; to that moment of opening the hatch and pulling yourself outside into the Universe. It is like coming around a corner and seeing the most magnificent sunset of your life, from one horizon to the other where it looks like the whole sky is on fire and there are all those colours, and the sun’s rays look like some great painting up over your head. You just want to open your eyes wide and try to look around at the image, and just try and soak it up. It’s like that all the time.
But then you notice that even though it is huge and capable [the International Space Station], it’s just a speck between everything which is on your left and all the colours and textures of our planet that are just pouring next to you on the right. And you are this little peephole of a microcosm in between those two things, both physically and historically. And you’re very much aware of that the whole time. I’m sort of gushing, but that’s what a spacewalk feels like. It is infinitely worth all the thousands of steps it takes to get there. It’s a great, great thing – I recommend it very highly.”
MISSION DETAIL
One of the participants on a 2023 Soyuz mission to the International Space Station will have the opportunity to conduct a spacewalk. Spaceflight training will be extended for a few weeks to allow time to prepare for a walk in space.
The training is conducted at the same location – the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Moscow – as the majority of the spaceflight training. Spacewalk training involves familiarization with the operation of the Orlan spacesuit and how the spacewalk is conducted.
The best place to simulate the environment of open space is underwater, so a lot of the training will be completed in Star City’s neutral buoyancy facility, where a full-scale mock-up of the ISS modules is submerged. Every step of the process of exiting and re-enter the space station in the Orlan space suit is extensively trained for.
The stay in space will be approximately two weeks to allow time to the prepare for and perform the spacewalk.