PPE – IN SPACE
Suit up
The International Space Station is a modular space station in the low Earth
orbit. Just like industrial, commercial and domestic facilities across our
planet, it needs to be maintained, repaired and upgraded by its residents.
External tasks call for some serious personal protective equipment
O n Saturday 30 May, NASA
astronauts launched
from American soil in a
commercially-built and
-operated American
crew spacecraft for the first time ever.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft,
carrying NASA astronauts Robert
Behnken and Douglas Hurley, lifted off on
the company’s Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
The mission: an end-to-end test flight to
validate the SpaceX crew transportation
system, including launch, in-orbit, docking
and landing operations (www.is.gd/teheji).
A mere 19 hours later – on Sunday 31
May – the crew successfully docked at the
International Space Station (ISS).
The ISS is a large spacecraft in orbit
around Earth that serves as a home and
research facility for astronauts (people
trained and certified by NASA, the
European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian
Space Agency, or Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency) and cosmonauts
(people trained and certified by the
Russian Space Agency).
The first piece of the station was
launched into space in November 1998
and construction was finally completed
in 2011. It includes laboratory modules
and living areas, as well as solar arrays for
collecting energy from the sun to provide
electrical power, radiators for temperature
control, docking ports for spacecraft,
and airlocks to allow the astronauts to
conduct spacewalks (see box, right, for
more ISS details).
SPACEWALKS
The latter – spacewalks – are an important
activity as they allows residents to carry
out maintenance, repairs and upgrades
to the external aspects of the station
(www.is.gd/vedomi). Damage may have
occurred from space debris, for example,
or external equipment may be in need of
an upgrade.
In fact, four astronauts ventured
outside of the ISS for three spacewalks
in January this year to complete battery
upgrades and finalise repairs to a
cosmic ray detector. Expedition 61 flight
engineers Jessica Meir and Christina
Koch of NASA conducted spacewalks to
replace nickel-hydrogen batteries with
new lithium-ion batteries that store
power generated by the station’s solar
arrays. NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan
(pictured, right) and space station
commander Luca Parmitano of ESA
(pictured, above) then finished installing
the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s new
cooling apparatus (www.is.gd/ferazi).
And at the end of June and start of
July, NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and
Behnken (pictured, left), of the SpaceX
Crew Dragon, also conducted spacewalks
to again replace aging nickel-hydrogen
batteries with new lithium-ion batteries
(www.is.gd/cuzicu).
SUITED & BOOTED
Undertaking spacewalks to conduct
external work to the ISS, such as those
mentioned above, would not be possible
without appropriate personal protective
By Adam Offord | Images & graphics by NASA
20 www.operationsengineer.org.uk Autumn 2020
/teheji)
/vedomi)
/ferazi)
/cuzicu)
/www.operationsengineer.org.uk