In this image, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Expedition 32 flight engineer, appears to touch the bright Sun during the mission’s third spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide is visible in the reflection of Williams’ helmet visor.
Today, April 12, is the International Day of Human Space Flight—marking Yuri Gagarin’s first flight in 1961, and the first space shuttle launch in 1981.
As we honor global collaboration in exploration, we’re moving forward to the Moon & Mars under the Artemis Accords.
Bruce McCandless goes aloft from the Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS) during an STS-41B EVA.
Attached to the forward axis of the astronaut is the Trunnion Pin Attachment Device (TPAD), a device to be used to assist in recovery and/or repair of satellites in orbit by effectively allowing the orbiter to save fuel while an astronaut goes out to mount to a strong point on a stricken satellite; the astronaut then flies it to be grappled by the remote manipulator arm and stowed in the payload bay.
The view of and from Bruce McCandless while conducting the first untethered EVA and preliminary test-flight of the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) on February 12, 1984. Bruce ventured approximately 320 feet from the orbiter.
Hitting the National Archives to begin to Camera Raw stills from 1980s Shuttle missions. There’s an endless trove of large format film, that, at least I’ve never seen before, just waiting to be tapped into; filling the gaps of the famous stills we all know and providing insight into the missions we don’t know so well. I really am in awe at it all.
ForSpace Helment Reflection Saturday, the rare real-life version: Painted by Pierre Mion for National Geographic, Apollo 15’s Jim Irwin is framed against the moon while assisting the (reflected) Al Worden in a spacewalk to recover film cassettes on Aug 5, 1971.
You can read through a transcript of the spacewalk over here, complete with a line from Worden as he witnesses the view that Mion recreated here: “Jim, you look absolutely fantastic against that Moon back there. That is really a most unbelievable, remarkable thing.”
54 years ago today on March 18, the Soviet Union launched Vokshod-2 into space, with the pilot being Alexei Leonov and the commander being Pavel Belyayev. Leonov became the first man to spacewalk, that lasted for a total of 12 minutes.
Most of the men could sleep propped up in their hardsuits, but John Bridgens wasn’t one of them.
After each day spent marching across the frozen desert, the homeless crews of ErebusandTerror lasted just long enough to rig the portable shelters and fill them with breathable air. As soon as they were inside, the spacers popped their helmet seals. They slumped down wherever they found themselves, passing out from exhaustion, sickness, or some combination of the two.
It was impossible to lie down properly in the hardsuits. When you sat down the rigid chestpiece kept you upright even if you went totally limp. The dozing men in the hab resembled nothing so much as a row of marionettes on a shelf, waiting for some giant puppeteer to come along and get them moving again.
Bridgens had never mastered the trick of sleeping propped up in the spacesuits. The hard metal and ceramic dug into his back and he couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. At the end of each day’s walk he used up precious resting time working his way out of the rigid armor.
He’d never thought he’d be spacewalking at all when this expedition began. Stewards weren’t expected to leave the safety of the ship, let alone stewards his age.
He was by far the oldest man left on the expedition. Old men simply weren’t allowed on Discovery Service missions unless they were a Captain or an Admiral, but he’d managed to find a clerical bot with an exploitable programming flaw. So now his age was reversed on the ship’s muster logs, and read as “26.”
Right now he desperately wished he really was that young. He felt every single day of his age as he knelt over his hardsuit clamshell and made his preparations. His back ached from carrying the weight of the suit all day and his knees screamed at him while he checked the seals, looking for fatal flaws. The suit had been beat to hell over the last three months out on the surface of this rock. Three months spent lumbering slowly through the frozen alien wilderness.
He flipped the chest armor over on the ground in front of him and his fingers traced the ghost of the steward’s insignia stamped on the front. A crossed pen and key over an open book, now barely visible. He’d kept his suit in immaculate condition on the ship, just like all his kit. All the fittings were polished and in perfect order. Now it was caked in dust and the servos jammed constantly. The march had reduced the suit to a scarred and battered wreck.
Nothing lived on this world. Nothing grew. The ground they tromped over day after day was nothing but dead regolith. What little wisps of atmosphere that were present kicked up sharp silicate particles while they walked. It ate away at divisional markings on the suits and pitted the armor. At this point they all looked like they’d been through a sandblaster.
Bridgens hardly even bothered to look up through his scratched and furrowed faceplate anymore. If he did all he saw was a long line of identical suits shambling through the cold like the walking dead. He wondered if the suits would just keep walking after they were all gone. Shuffling forward propping up dead spacers just as they propped up the sleeping ones.
Bridgens turned the chestpiece back over on its front and started to double check the seals. Why he did it at this late stage, he didn’t know. He supposed it was habit. A routine. There was comfort in routines. Checklists just like he followed when laying out the table for the officers’ mess. Check the airlines for micro-leaks. Remember to polish the silver. Routine. Make sure your helmet sits flush with the ring. Don’t forget to send the updated menu to the officers’ tablets. Routine. Fuel, oxygen, radio, batteries…
“FORB!” Henry would playfully chant when doing his own safety checks, just the way they taught cadets to say.
Henry.
A tear threatened in the corner of his eye and he blinked it away. These checks and double checks hadn’t saved Henry. They certainly wouldn’t save him.
The suit condition wasn’t going to get any better. Bridgens sat back on his heels and glanced across the hab to the sickbay compartment. Henry was there.
The shout of “Man down!” over the radio channel was still sharp in Bridgens’ mind. He remembered stumbling forward to where Henry had fallen, half tripping with each step in the clumsy hardsuit. His earpiece echoed with staticky whispers of “John…John…?” while Lieutenant Jopson helped to lift Henry onto the cargo skiff and settle him with the others too sick or exhausted to move.
It felt like lifting a child when they finally stopped and made camp. Even with the heavy dead weight of the hardsuit Henry was so light when Bridgens carried him into the sickbay. Starving, sick, just like the rest of them. He’d wanted to get the damn suit off Henry and let him rest, but the younger man weakly waved him away with a gloved hand.
“I’m all right…I can sleep in my suit. Just need a little sleep. Can I sleep now, John?”
Henry had smiled when Bridgens nodded. When TerrorandErebus left Earth Henry had been all muscle. Now his smile was missing teeth and his cheeks were so sunken his head looked like a skull beneath his wispy beard.
The memory brought the tears in full, and Bridgens shook his head and started back in on his suit check.
“FORB,” he muttered.
Henry was a spacer born and bred and practically lived in the hardsuit. Whenever he’d come inside the hull after his watch he’d seek out Bridgens and talk about taking the steward for a real spacewalk. Henry could go on for hours about how beautiful the stars were once you got outside the confines of the ship, and Bridgens loved to listen to him.
This march through a cold alien desert wasn’t what Bridgens had in mind when he’d dreamed about those walks with Henry. Back when this expedition seemed like a chance for one last adventure.
Instead they’d been stranded on this frozen world for years. Years spent clinging to a forlorn hope they’d be able to make it away. Years spent huddling in two starship hulks while disease and starvation loomed closer, only now finally interrupted by a desperate flight across the endless expanse. Going for broke.
He picked up his belt bag and strapped it around his chest. He’d taken Henry’s personal logs after it was all over. It didn’t seem right to leave them lying with the rest of the detritus they left behind them. He wasn’t about to leave Henry’s memories sitting in the middle of nowhere with empty air tanks and depleted batteries.
The audio chip went into the bag, along with his own tablet and a stale Goldner’s ration bar. He heaved a sigh and began the laborious process of working his way back into the hardsuit.
No one bothered him as he cycled the airlock to the hab. His heavy boots crunched over the silicate and his suit’s heating coils whined as they struggled to fight against the frigid atmosphere. At one point he thought he heard his radio crackle with a muffled “Mr Bridgens?” but he ignored it. Might have just been interference anyway. It didn’t matter at this point. He climbed to the top of a small rocky ridgeline and followed it away from camp.
Sunset came late on this world, and he walked until the star they’d named King William drew closer to the horizon. About three miles away from the camp, he found a spot to watch the strange star as it drifted down. Henry always moved gracefully in these awkward hardsuits but the best Bridgens could manage was a clumsy fall onto his rump. He slumped for a minute, letting the suit prop him up as it did the spacers back at camp. As it had for Henry.
Despite the chill just outside his scratched faceplate, it was hot and sweaty inside his suit, so he switched off the heater. The whine died down, leaving him alone with quiet clicks and hisses as the oxygen circulated. Carefully he pulled his arm out of the suit sleeve, pulling at the glove with his other hand. He wormed his fingers to the belt bag at his chest, found the Goldner’s ration bar there. Fed it up through the collar into his helmet and slowly ate it. It was stale and almost impossible to chew, but in this moment it was delicious.
He drew his arm back down into the suit sleeve and reached for the panel cover on his forearm. Found Henry’s audio chip in the available connections menu—the only available connection this far from camp—and hit play on the next entry.
Henry’s voice came through his earpiece. The entry was an old poem the younger man had started rewriting after the ships had left Earth.
“The Stars, the Stars, the Open Stars…”
Bridgens closed his eyes and listened to Henry’s voice. Let him speak one last time about how beautiful the stars were.
It was much colder now with the suit’s heater turned off, but he kept his eyes closed and kept listening to Henry.
“I love the Stars…I love the Stars…”
Propped up in his suit, John Bridgens was asleep before King William’s Star had finished drifting below the horizon.
