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Houston, We Have a Corpse

1. Five men and a corpse
2. What do we do with a dead space tourist?
3. Preparations
4. 2002: a space autopsy
5. Dinner time
6. Suiting up
7. Interstellar undertakers
8. Appendix

Five men and a corpse

Wednesday

Sergei awoke to a muffled thumping on the door of his kayuta. He reluctantly opened his eyes and pushed open the door to behold Temir floating outside the cabin, a worried expression on his round Asiatic face. Removing his earplugs, he mumbled, “What?”

“Seryozha, something’s happened.”

Sergei yawned and rubbed his eyes, befuddled from sleep. “Chto?” he repeated.

“Come and look.”

Sergei unzipped his vertical sleeping bag, shivering in the draft of the ventilation fan above him. He reached for a T-shirt secured under a bungee cord to the inside of his door, and awkwardly pulled this on, tucking it into his shorts. He then exited his kayuta, emerging into Zvezda’s cluttered living quarters and glancing at the closed door of the opposite port kayuta which Joe, the ISS commander, still slumbered obliviously in. Sergei propelled himself after Temir through Zvezda towards Zarya, the Functional Cargo Block, where the replacement Soyuz was docked. He looked at the luminous hands of his wristwatch: 03:32 GMT.

Around them the Russian Service Module’s various noisy life support mechanisms hummed, whirred, thudded and gurgled – hence the need for protective earplugs – but at this hour the place was otherwise deserted; the rest of the crew and visitors were still asleep.

They entered the somewhat cramped spherical BO, Habitation Module of the Soyuz TMA via Zarya’s Pressurized Adapter and docking hatch, ducking to avoid a fat white ventilation tube snaking into the spacecraft. Temir and the space tourist who had booked a seat on the Soyuz taxi flight had secured their sleeping bags in here. A small VK, personal fan, mounted nearby wafted a cool breeze, circulating the air so the sleepers didn’t suffocate in their own carbon dioxide – in microgravity, there was no convection to carry it away.

“Is there something wrong with Mr. Hadden?” Sergei asked curiously, peering at their guest, who reposed peacefully in his sleeping bag.

“There sure is. He’s dead.”

“Myortvy?” Sergei repeated stupidly, not sure he had heard Temir correctly. He floated over to the elderly man and prodded his cheek tentatively. Mr. Hadden’s skin was cold to the touch and he wasn’t breathing.

“Da, he’s snuffed it. He was fine last night. But I woke up not long ago and he was like this,” Temir said bemusedly.

Sergei ran a hand through his unruly black hair, at a loss for what to do. He then took Mr. Hadden by the shoulders and shook him gently. “Mr. Hadden! Wake up!”

Temir rolled his eyes. “Like that’s going to help.”

Seeing that his efforts at reviving Mr. Hadden were fruitless, Sergei told Temir, “Temyusha, you’d better go wake the others.”

As Temir left, Sergei poked again at the corpse’s pallid face with a sort of morbid fascination. He recalled viewing his babushka in her coffin a few years ago. She had looked like a wax mannequin with no resemblance to the lively elderly lady she had previously been. Mr. Hadden was similarly mannequin-like, his features disturbingly still.

The wealthy American tourist had come up as a uchastnik polyota, flight participant, to the International Space Station on a replacement Soyuz “taxi,” which docked the previous Friday. The Soyuz already docked had nearly passed its nominal service life of two hundred days, during which its nitrogen peroxide oxidizer and unsymmetric-dimethyl hydrazine fuel gradually evaporated, though its components were rated to spend up to one year in space. The resident crew – with Sergei piloting (the first time he had flown the spacecraft in orbit) – moved it to the base of the Pirs module before the visiting crew arrived. The new Soyuz then docked to the forward Zarya node, in what resembled an orbital version of “Musical Chairs”. The Soyuz craft served as an emergency escape vessel for the Expedition Crew on board and were swapped every six months, as had been done on Mir.

Temir of Kazakhstan – who, like Sergei, was rated as a Soyuz commander – had piloted the sturdy little spacecraft and Jean-Pierre, a French European Space Agency cosmonaut-researcher, sat in the third seat. Russia’s lucrative space tourist program continued despite increasingly ineffectual objections from NASA.

Sergei heard excited voices drawing near and he poked his head out the hatchway. His two Expedition crewmates – flight engineer Yurii and American ISS commander Joe – floated down to him from the Transfer Chamber along with Temir and Jean-Pierre. “You’re telling me Mr. Hadden is dead?” said Joe disbelievingly.

“That what you normally are when you not breathe,” said Sergei in his broken English, with more than a little sarcasm. The commander could be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes.

“Bugger! Goddamnit!” exclaimed Joe, thinking, Of all the bad things that had to happen …

“Let’s have a look!” said Yurii with eager curiosity, making to push past the others.

“Don’t touch him!” Jean-Pierre hastily interjected. “I am the resident physician; I had better examine him. Please stay back.” Sergei pulled back as the lean, grey-haired Frenchman glided through the hatchway. Yurii, ignoring the directive, shoved his way through behind him and the other two looked in from the opening. “I see dead people,” Yurii quipped, in English – a line from one of the DVD movies they had watched up here.

“‘Person’,” Sergei corrected him, then switched to Russian. “There’s only one of him.”

“Whatever.”

“Joe, I need a stethoscope, thermometer and penlight, s’il vous plait.” Joe went off all the way down to the Destiny lab module at the Station’s forward end to fetch the requested items from the Ambulatory Medical Pack, a component of the American ISS Health Maintenance System. The American segment was stocked with enough medical supplies to outfit a small medical clinic. Joe located the locker on Destiny’s floor marked with a red cross, and hauled out the soft blue bag. He dug out the equipment from its various compartments, then headed back to Zvezda. “Here you are, Jean.” He pronounced the name as Jon, handing the items to the physician.

“Merci,” Jean-Pierre thanked him as he turned to take them, and glared with exasperation when he saw Sergei and Yurii crowded behind him. They grinned back. “We just watch.”

The physician sighed and turned back to his patient. He had encountered the pair during his training at Zvyozdyi Gorodok – Star City – and learned then why Joe (and others) nicknamed them “Double Trouble”. He had also learned that no amount of glares or protests would alter their behavior in the slightest.

His examination was only a formality as it was quite evident that Mr. Hadden was no longer in this world. Jean-Pierre nonetheless listened for a heartbeat with the stethoscope, and peered into the old man’s blue eyes, using the small penlight to see if the pupils dilated. (They didn’t.) He poked the disposable oral thermometer under Mr. Hadden’s tongue. “Hmm … temperature is almost the same as ambient. He’s been dead for several hours. Died of natural causes, but I could not say what for sure without an autopsy.”

Joe grimaced and rubbed a hand across his unshaven face. Why did this have to happen on my watch? “I’ll have to call this in as soon as we’re in range.”

“Excuse us, please.” Sergei and Yurii pushed their way out and floated aftwards to Zvezda’s command center in the RO, Working Compartment. Yurii booted up an IBM ThinkPad laptop secured in a corner and opened the “World Map” display while Sergei restarted the four Wiener Power laptops arrayed along a platform on the TsP’s – Central Command Post’s – work station. Through the software on these, the crew could control the Russian segment’s various interlinked systems and operations via the BKU, Onboard Control Complex. Sergei brought up a list of the day’s Russian ground site communications pass times. He glanced at his watch: 03:55.

Yurii dashed back into Zarya’s spherical GA, Pressurized Adapter. “We can call Moskva; we are in their range now,” Yurii yelled down at Joe over the noisy, cramped module. Joe waved acknowledgment. Russian comm was available for between five to twenty minutes of the ISS’s 92-minute orbit when ground stations were in range, around ten consecutive orbits of every 15 to 16 per day marked on the timeline. The ISS moved westwards every orbit pass over the vast Russian continent due to orbit precession, so ground site passes were earlier each 24 hours. These passes currently spread over evening to morning, so the crew were arising at 04:00, two hours earlier than their usual awake time, in order to maximize the longest passes of 20 minutes.

The U.S. S-band was the primary communications link, available for around fifty to seventy-five percent of an orbit due to signal blockage caused by the mass of the ISS itself. Both Moscow and Houston control centers were linked by voice circuits so each could use the others’ comm assets, but the two Russians made a point of using their own country’s independent system whenever they could. (Russian Mission Control preferred to use this in general, anyway, for monitoring their telemetry, experiments and so on.) Besides, Yurii and Sergei were banned from using U.S. comm.

Sergei put on a headset; the jack was plugged into a socket at one of the six STTS comm panels scattered around the Service Module. He opened up the VHF-1-Regul radio link (the Russian equivalent of the U.S. S-band) to the Russian flight control center at Korolyov – relayed there through ground stations – and spoke in Russian. “Moskva, this is MKS, please respond. We have, um, a problem.” Sergei had wanted to use that phrase ever since he had seen the Apollo 13 movie up here, though he hadn’t imagined it would be in this context.

Dmitri, the current Moscow Mission Control Center Glavnyi operator – the Russian equivalent of Houston’s Capcom, and Sergei and Yurii’s crew trainer – answered. “MKS, this is Moskva.” He and Sergei used the Russian acronym for ISS. “Privet, Seryozha, what’s wrong?”

“Mitya, you’d better get Vladimir on line. This is really big.” It would be 8 a.m. in Moscow but 7 a.m. at TsUP. Tsentr Upravleniya Poletom – the Flight Control Center – did not shift to Daylight Savings but remained on DMV, Decreed Moscow Time, all year round.

A surprised-sounding Vladimir, the gruff, grey-haired Flight Director for this shift, broke in. “MKS, what is the nature of your problem?”

“It’s our guest cosmonaut, Mr. Hadden. He’s, um,” – Sergei couldn’t think of a delicate way to phrase this – “dead.”

“Myortvy?” exclaimed Vladimir, following with a few Russian obscenities. Sergei envisioned the commotion breaking out in TsUP. “Sergei Aleksandrovich, what did you do to him?” Vladimir – and most in Zvyozdyi Gorodok – was well aware of Sergei and Yurii’s mischievous tendencies.

“We didn’t do anything!” Sergei retorted indignantly. “Temyusha woke up this morning and found him like that in his sleeping bag.”

“You could do nothing to revive him?”

“Vladimir, he’d been dead for several hours.”

“Have you any idea what caused his death?”

“Maybe we can perform a séance and ask his ghost,” said Sergei, tiring of the conversation.

“Don’t be cheeky, Sergei,” chided Vladimir. “Mr. Hadden is – was – an American citizen, so I will contact John at Houston and they will inform Mr. Hadden’s family.”

“What do we do in the meantime?”

“Continue your normal activities – Mr. Hadden won’t be going anywhere – and we will get back to you at the next comm pass.” This was at 05:31.

Sergei signed off and removed the headset, letting it float near the comm panel, and glanced at Joe, who had entered Zvezda’s work module. “Joe, they will get back to us and tell us what to do.”

Joe looked at the “Form 24” radiogram which he had printed out during the Russians’ conversation with TsUP. “Well, Wednesday’s schedule is obsolete, already,” he muttered disgruntledly. The Soyuz crew’s science experiments for today would have to be rescheduled. Everyone went off to perform their morning ablutions, dress and ready themselves for the day.

What do we do with a dead space tourist …?

They met up at the wardroom table in Zvezda’s living compartment for breakfast at 06:40. It was Yurii’s turn to prepare meals and, after heating various items for thirty minutes in the American food warmer set into the table, he handed out various packages and utensils to the others. The Expedition Crew had American rations for breakfast and lunch, and Russian for dinner and a snack today; tomorrow this would be reversed. To make food preparation easier, they had much the same rations each. Today these were: Mexican Scrambled Eggs, Apple Sauce, Oatmeal with Brown Sugar, Grits with Butter and rehydrated coffee or whatever fruit juice they liked; they also took an Aerovit multivitamin tablet each (multivitamins were taken at breakfast and lunch).

The items were variously thermostabilized or rehydrated with water from the condensate water regeneration system via hot and cold dispenser valves. The Soyuz crew brought their own Russian rations such as Cottage Cheese with Nuts and Chicken with Prunes, though the Expedition Crew usually shared some rations with them – there were some spare, not-yet-expired rations left over from the previous Expedition Crew’s tenure.

They ate with less enthusiasm than usual; no one felt particularly hungry with a corpse in the vicinity.

“So, what you reckon they want to do?” mused Temir.

“Give Mr. Hadden space burial, I guess,” said Sergei. “Or maybe you take him home with you.”

Jean-Pierre looked horrified. “We still have four days left …” – the taxi crew were spending nine days onboard the ISS, departing Saturday – “… and, believe me, you won’t be wanting to go anywhere near him by then.”

“We could shove him in Progress,” suggested Yurii through a mouthful of Mexican Scrambled Eggs. The Progress cargo carrier, which brought goods up to the ISS and docked to Zvezda’s aft end, also served as a garbage truck; waste was packed into it over the following months and the ship was guided by remote control to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

“It is not undocking for three more months,” Sergei said. “Mr. Hadden will be very smelly by then.”

“I’m sure Houston have a contingency plan,” said Joe irritably. “And don’t speak disrespectfully of the dead.” Sergei, Yurii and Temir exchanged amused glances.

“I am sure Mr. Hadden will not mind,” Sergei retorted. “He seem nice enough.”

“He is probably hovering around somewhere here, listening to us,” added Temir and everyone involuntarily looked around the cluttered module.

“The Station would be cool place to hang out if you were dead,” Yurii said cheerfully.

Sergei imagined hordes of ghostly tourists floating through and outside the ISS, chattering inanely, taking photos (or whatever ghosts did in the afterlife to record images) and watching the unwitting Expedition Crews go about their daily life. “They could hitch ride on Soyuz to get up here.”

“Not enough room!” said Temir. “They have to use the Space Shuttle. Cram them in cargo bay.”

“Could they just float up here?” wondered Yurii. “Ghosts not bound by laws of gravity.”

“How would you know? You the resident expert?” Joe muttered. He then glanced at his watch: 05:25. “We’re scheduled for a Daily Planning Conference at oh-six-hundred, so I’ll go down to Destiny to contact Houston then.”

Yurii looked at his own watch, said, “Russkii comm pass,” and went back to the TsP to discuss some maintenance issues with Moscow for this 20-minute pass, then came back to the table. The others continued their meal, then Joe pushed away from the table and headed off to the U.S. section. Everyone else, of course, followed.

Joe entered Destiny and consulted the American On-Board Short-Term plan schedule for the day’s S-band passes, marked with horizontal green stripes. He then checked the position of the ISS on the World Map display laptop in the port corner, then set up the call to Ground Channel 2 via the S-band link from a nearby IBM ThinkPad 760XD laptop. The S-band antenna gimbaled and locked on to one of NASA’s two Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (a third was parked in orbit as a back-up). He positioned himself in front of the wall-mounted Audio Terminal Unit on the port side of the hatchway and pressed the push-to-talk button on the ATU, bringing it to full power and activating it. The device had a speaker, microphone outlet, headphone jack and various function buttons that could link speakers in separate modules, to the Shuttle or astronauts doing EVAs, as well as the ground.

“Houston, this is Alpha calling on Space-to-Ground one; please respond,” said Joe, stating the S-band channel he was using. “Alpha” was the Americans’ unofficial name for the ISS, which the Russians refused to use, countering that the now-deorbited Mir had been the first, or “alpha,” international station. None of the ISS’s partners – America, Russia, ESA and Japan – had yet decided upon a proper name for it. Indeed, cost overruns, funding cuts and mission delays – and consequent bickering between the partners – meant that the Station’s construction was not yet completed; it could currently only support a resident crew of three, as Mir had.

“Alpha, this is Houston; we read you loud and clear. Go ahead,” said Jerry, the Capcom, from the Blue Flight Control Room.

“Jerry, I need to speak to John about you-know-what.”

“Hey, Joe, this is John,” the ISS Houston Flight Director on shift duty broke in from his console next to the Capcom’s, in the fourth row from the front of the room. “Moscow told us the bad news.”

“Yeah, he was fine last night.”

“These things can happen to anyone … We contacted his family and they’ve agreed to a space burial. You won’t be able to put him in the Progress, though – it’s not due to be undocked for three months till the next one’s launched from Baikonur – so you’ll have to do a contingency EVA burial. That’s a bit more dignified, anyway, than literally throwing him out with the garbage ….

“Oh, and the family want an autopsy first, just to be sure of what killed him.”

“An autopsy?” Joe’s voice cracked in horror. The others looked equally shocked. “We don’t have the facilities ….”

“There’s some equipment stored in Destiny in a plain bag, with the other medical supply packs in the CHeCS. The medical team thought it prudent to bring it up with the first Expedition Crew, ‘just in case’.”

“That’s news to me!”

“It isn’t something we advertise … uh, I’ve got the Surgeon here to talk to you.”

“Okay.” A click as Joe was switched over to the Flight Surgeon’s console. “Hi, Bill. We’ve got a situation up here.”

“So I heard. What’s the condition of the body?”

“He – it – looks, uh, okay … it isn’t decomposed yet.” Everyone looked a bit nauseated at the image that phrase invoked.

“Well, the body is going to become a biohazard in the next few hours because of bacterial decay, so I want you to move Mr. Hadden to an airlock – uh, say the Pirs airlock – and store him there. We’ve scheduled the autopsy for this afternoon, ship time.”

Sergei grimaced. “Couldn’t you store him in Quest?”

Joe snapped, “He came here courtesy of Russia, so he can go in your airlock!”

Bill interjected, “Joe, the death and autopsy procedures are in the ‘Medical Procedures’ handbook, though these are only a basic guide. A full autopsy will be impossible in microgravity – way too messy – so just take tissue samples of the major organs. Don’t worry about sampling the intestines …. We’ve also been consulting with Moscow; the organ samples can be taken home in the Russian Kriogen cold accumulators when the taxi crew departs on Saturday.

“We’ve never had a death in orbit before and this is an unprecedented opportunity …. I’ll guide you through the procedure, of course.” To Joe, he sounded disturbingly eager.

“Who says I’m doing it? We do have a doctor on board, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about him –” (Jean-Pierre looked indignant.) “Well, that’s one hassle solved. I’ll remain on standby over the S-band link in case you need me. I’ll want the procedure videotaped, of course.”

Temir grinned. “Bet that won’t make it onto NASA’s Gallery website.”

Joe ignored this. “Bill, we’ve got a lot of preparation to do, so I’ll have to sign off.” He turned to his Russian crewmates – Yurii had come floating in during the conversation. “Sergei and Yurii, you two can assist Jean-Pierre,” Joe ordered, seeing the opportunity for a little revenge. “Double Trouble” looked less than enthused.

“Only on condition that we do VKD for space burial,” countered Yurii, using the Russian acronym for EVA, from their word for “exit”. The pair loved to go outside at any opportunity.

Joe scowled and muttered, “Fine, okay, whatever.”

Orbital Corpse: Space tourist snuffs it

by James Oberg

Houston, Texas – American billionaire space tourist Stephen Hadden died during his sleep last night, a Flight Director at Houston Mission Control announced today during a press conference. Mr. Hadden, 74, a resident of California, was midway through his eight-day stay onboard the International Space Station.

He arrived on a Soyuz “taxi” spaceship with commander Temir Aitmatov of Kazakhstan and French ESA cosmonaut-researcher Jean-Pierre Verdier, hosted by the current Expedition Crew – U.S. commander Joe McLean and Russians Sergei Konstantinov and Yurii Zolotyov. Mr. Hadden did not have any known health problems and there are no suspicious circumstances.

“NASA and the RSA extend their sympathies towards Mr. Hadden’s family,” Flight Director John Curry said. “Unfortunately, such a sad event can still occur despite every precaution.” Mr. Hadden’s adult son and daughter have agreed to a space burial, according to Mr. Curry. “Mr. Hadden included this wish in his will.”

Stephen Hadden is the first spacefarer to die in orbit. Four cosmonauts died during descent on separate missions in 1967 and 1971; the Apollo-1 crew perished during a ground test of their spacecraft when it caught fire and the Space Shuttle Challenger crew were killed when the Shuttle exploded during ascent in 1986.

Although NASA does not publicize such eventualities, it does have a contingency plan, Flight Director Curry said. “If the Space Shuttle were docked we would bring the body back to Earth, but no flights are due for some time, so a space burial is the only other option.” The two Expedition cosmonauts will do an EVA with the body and propel the deceased towards Earth, where Mr. Hadden will burn up in the atmosphere. “It is a dignified end.” The funeral will be broadcast on NASA TV at a time yet to be specified.

Preparations

“Oh, hardy har-har,” muttered Joe dourly, as he read the first line of “ISS Medical Procedures – DEATH”.

Death

(ISS MED/3A – ALL/FIN)

This tends to be a fatal condition. No treatment is possible.

Symptoms

• Lack of respiration
• No discernible pulse
• No response to outside stimuli
• No brain activity detectable on EEC
• No difference between body temperature and ambient (algor mortis)
• Stiffened limbs (rigor mortis)

Procedure

1. Contact Surgeon as soon as possible so death can be certified.
2. Unstow:
   • Gloves, Non-Sterile (P3-A2)
   • 3-M Surgical Masks (CCPK)
   • Body bag (CheCS)
   • 2 bungee cords (or more as needed)
   • Sleeping bag liner of decedent

   Note: If cause of death is uncertain, an autopsy may be required. The procedure for this is outlined below.

3. Don gloves and 3-M surgical masks.
4. Secure decedent’s arms to torso by wrapping a bungee cord around the body; similarly secure legs.
5. Insert body into sleeping bag liner (this will require at least 2 crewmembers). Then pull body bag over this and zip up.
6. If a docked Progress supply craft is due to be undocked, store the body in this. It will burn up with the Progress upon atmospheric re-entry.
7. A brief funeral service will be held as per the religious beliefs of the decedent.
8. If the Progress is not scheduled to be undocked, an EVA will be performed ASAP taking the decedent outside and the body propelled towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere.
9. If the Space Shuttle is docked to the ISS it may be possible to take the decedent back to Earth, depending upon wishes of Surgeon and the family of the decedent.

Autopsy procedure

1. Contact Surgeon who will guide crew through procedure (only a brief outline is provided here). An autopsy will only be performed if there are no other options. Due to the biohazard risk, a full autopsy is not possible.
2. Unstow:
   • Gloves, non-sterile (ALSP, CCPK)
   • Autopsy medical tool kit (CHeCS)
   • Rebreather gas mask (ГА panels 230,404)
   • Bungee cords
   • CPR Suction device (ALSP)
   • Syringes (ALSP)
   • Sony PDP 150P camcorder
   • Antiseptic wipes
   • Gauze pads
   • Biosample containers
   • Ziplock plastic bags (CCPK, ALSP-7, AMP P4-B7)
3. The autopsy is to be held in either the Docking Compartment, Universal Docking Module or Docking and Stowing Module (depending upon stage of ISS construction) and will require at least 2 crewmembers, one of whom is to film the procedure. Ventilation fans to the docking module used are to be switched off so as not to convey contaminants to the rest of the Station, thus Russian rebreather gas masks will need to be donned to avoid suffocation. The masks have a service life of up to 140 minutes. (Refer to GCTC LSS ISS guide for usage instructions.) In DC-1, air ducting and the B3 fan may be disassembled to facilitate access.
4. Secure deceased in module with bungee cords, after removing clothes from body.
5. A digital thermometer is to be inserted into the rectum if time of death is uncertain. This can be ascertained by comparison of body temperature to ambient. Measure the body with measuring tape. Note any abnormalities of the external body surfaces; describe these either by talking into a voice recorder or making notes on a diagram and/or checklist.

   Note: Due to the absence of gravity there is no liver mortis, settling of the blood.

6. Make a deep Y-shaped incision from the front of each shoulder to the bottom of the breastbone, and then extend the tail of the Y to the pubic bone. Then peel the skin, muscle and soft tissues off the chest wall with a scalpel. Assisting crewmember/s may be required to hold the skin flaps out of the way, and to use the suction device and gauze pads to remove floating blood globules.
7. Use the bone saw to separate the rib cage, performing two cuts up either side of the sternum so the chest plate can be lifted off. Cut open the pericardial sac surrounding the heart, then the pulmonary artery where it exits the heart. The prosector is then to stick their finger into the artery and feel for a thromboembolus (blood clot which may have lodged there and caused sudden death). Next, open the abdominal wall flaps to prepare for organ sample removal.
8. Cut a sample from each organ – the heart, a lung, spleen, liver, kidneys, skeletal muscles – and place each one in a Ziplock bag. Use a syringe to draw a sample of the vitreous humor and spinal fluid. These specimens will be stored in the Destiny lab refrigerator or Kriogen until they can be returned to Earth for further examination, or analysis performed in the lab.
9. If a brain sample is required, secure the head. Use a scalpel to cut from behind one ear, over the crown of the head to the other ear. Pull the front flap forward to expose the skull; similarly pull the back flap rearwards. Take the bone saw provided and cut around the equator of the cranium, being careful not to cut into the brain. Lift off the top half (calvarium) of the skull, then slice a segment of the cerebrum and place in biosample container.
10. Sew up incisions made in head and torso, then place body in the body bag provided; it will either be buried in space or returned to Earth via Shuttle.
11. If necessary, evacuate the airlock and vent any contaminants into space. After repressurization, use antiseptic wipes to thoroughly clean surfaces.

As Joe tried to take all this in without gagging, the others were grappling with Mr. Hadden’s body, maneuvering it up through the narrow Soyuz hatchway into Zarya’s GA, then through the narrow, locker-lined FGB towards Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment. They had left him in his sleeping bag, zipping it up to under his chin. “I’ll pull and you keep him steady,” Sergei directed Temir and Yurii. “He’s stiffened up already … oh, we’ll have to move the Orlan spacesuits.” He accosted Joe, who was coming back from Destiny with the Medical Procedures folder. “Joe, hold Mr. Hadden here for one minute, please.” Sergei held out a bungee strap attached to the sleeping bag at Joe, who took it in a dazed sort of way. Sergei glanced at the forward hatch leading from the GA to the Pressurized Mating Adapter, which designated the American segment. It sloped down a little, so he couldn’t see directly into Node 1, Unity. The Quest Joint Airlock, resembling an oversized sardine can, was stuck on the starboard side of Unity (in Station co-ordinates, the side that the U.S. positive Y-axis pointed from) relative to the direction of travel. Three U.S. EMU spacesuits were stored in the Equipment Lock.

The three darted from Zarya into Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment, then down the connecting hatchway into the Pirs docking compartment. Here floated Sergei and Yurii’s Orlan-M spacesuits, looking uncannily like discarded bodies, as well as a third suit. Yurii’s, #12, had red stripes; Sergei’s, #14, had blue stripes. The third suit, also red-striped, was numbered 23. This suit was adjusted to fit Joe, though he was not assigned any spacewalks for this mission.

“Where can we put them?” asked Temir.

“Guess we could stick ’em in the PkhO for a while.” Sergei and Yurii began detaching the spacesuits from their fastenings. Yurii pushed his cream-colored suit at Temir, who floated awkwardly with the bulky suit up through the docked hatches and into Zvezda’s spherical Transfer Compartment or Perekhodnoi Otsek. There were attachments and an Orlan interface unit set up in here as well as Pirs. The first Expedition crew had been assigned an EVA from the PkhO (Pirs was not then in orbit), but this had not eventuated due to communications problems between the suits and Ground.

The two Russians followed with the second suit, then went down and brought up the third Orlan. Each suit weighed 79 kilograms on Earth.

“Let’s go get Mr. Hadden.” Sergei propelled himself back into Zarya and relieved Joe of the corpse, pulling it behind him like a misshapen helium balloon as he used handholds to maneuver his way back down into Pirs. Yurii and Temir helped steer Mr. Hadden into the airlock.

“We’ll have to clear Pirs out as much as we can,” said Sergei as he looked around at the various equipment bags, cables, hoses, and tools used to prepare the suits for VKD (the Russian acronym for spacewalks). They spent the next few minutes transferring this into the PkhO. Mr. Hadden was then temporarily secured to a metal handhold with a bungee cord.

To free up more space, they also disassembled the B-3 fan and joining rings of a white ventilation tube that snaked through Pirs into the old Soyuz like a fat tapeworm, stowing these temporarily in the PkhO.

A hastily-rescheduled cyclogram had been radioed up by the Regul-Paket system on laptop #3. The Expedition Crew had completed their morning exercise program of an hour each (Joe using the Resistance Exercise Device, Yurii on the Treadmill with Vibration Isolation System, Sergei on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System). Yurii had done the daily 40-minute SOZh – Russian life support system – maintenance. Temir and Jean-Pierre continued the few small experiments brought up with them. They then met for lunch at the galley table at 10:30. Three hours of the afternoon – 12:00 to 15:00 – were scheduled for the autopsy. Temir was to spend the time preparing Sergei and Yurii’s Orlan spacesuits for the contingency VKD; he, Yurii and Sergei would spend much of tomorrow on this as well. “They want Mr. Hadden’s body off the Station as soon as possible, as it will become a biohazard, so we’re to do the burial early Friday,” Joe explained. “It also fits in with Russian comm times.”

As Yurii and Sergei had the most VKD experience they were the logical choice for a contingency VKD, and had duly been assigned to this. A clean-up of Pirs, a daily plan review then conference with the Ground would occupy them until 16:00. Dinner from 17:00 to 17:30, then bed at the usual 19:30. Yurii and Sergei would go to bed the following day at 17:30 in order to get as much rest as possible as they were to rise at 00:00 on Friday – six hours were needed to prepare the cosmonauts and Station for the VKD.

While the others were occupied with corpse-hauling, Jean-Pierre, in the meantime, had found the autopsy tools in Destiny, discretely stored in an unmarked white cloth-covered pack with the other medical supply bags (Advanced Life Support, Ambulatory Medical Pack, Basic Cardiac Life Support, and so forth). These were stored in the Crew Health Care System rack. This would reside in Destiny until the arrival of the U.S. Habitation Module, where it would be transferred there with three more CHeCS racks. As funding cuts had canceled the Hab module for the time being, though, it might end up here permanently.

He first removed a long opaque white nylon bag that was folded several times, resting on top of the kit – Body bag. It was a basic kit, including a scalpel, bone saw, rib cutters, skull chisel, long knife and Hagedorn needle (this a sailmaker’s needle for sewing up the corpse afterwards), and a ball of twine. No enterotomes, Jean-Pierre noted – these were special scissors used to cut open the intestines. That would be far too messy and biohazardous in microgravity – not to mention smelly. Jean-Pierre had performed several autopsies in his medical career and by far the worst part was cutting or slicing open a cadaver’s intestines to examine the contents – the sight and smell turned the strongest of stomachs.

Joe had retrieved the rebreather gas masks and their thermal insulation cases from behind panels 230 and 404 in Zarya. The crew met up in Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment, just above the entrance to Pirs.

“We had better wear some old clothes,” said Jean-Pierre.

“I will get some from Progress,” Sergei volunteered. He headed aft into the docked Progress, where some shorts and T-shirts that had been worn during exercise for a week then discarded were stuffed in plastic Ziplock bags. Wrinkling his nose, he extracted the by-now malodorous items – three sets of Russian cotton T-shirts and shorts in rather lurid colors. One was aqua with red neck and arm trim – Jean-Pierre can wear that.

Jean-Pierre, Sergei and Yurii stripped off their outer clothes, which they secured under some bungee cords and, clad only in their underpants, struggled into the old shorts and T-shirts. “You two go and undress Mr. Hadden while I sort out the autopsy tools,” directed the physician.

“I’ll go prepare the Orlans.” Temir did not wish to hang around for the autopsy.

“We’ll have to close the hatch,” said Joe, “and shut down the ventilation fans between the modules, ’else the air vents will spread blood all over the Station.” Everyone grimaced at that image.

2002: a space autopsy

“Oh, yuck!” exclaimed Sergei as he and Yurii gazed upon Mr. Hadden’s naked corpse after they had awkwardly pulled off his sleeping bag, then clothes.

Like most old men’s, Mr. Hadden’s body was shriveled, wrinkled and spotted, and furred with sparse grey hair. He was quite skinny – the sight would have been even more grotesque had he been overweight – and the Russians hurriedly averted their eyes from his groin. “I hope I die before I get old.”

“Considering we are Ruskii, that’s very likely,” Yurii said dryly, referring obliquely to the dismally low average lifespan of Russian men (currently around 60 years), then added, “After we get through this, I’m going to break out the spetsial’naya meditsina.” He referred to the small supply of vodka they kept secretly stashed away behind a panel in Zvezda. The vodka was stored in half-liter drink bags, labeled as “psychological support” materials, then sent up to the ISS via a Progress cargo ferry and brought out on “special” occasions. As supplies were limited, the vodka was jealously hoarded. This practice – which NASA most assuredly would have disapproved of, as it maintained a zero-alcohol policy – had also been an unofficial practice on board Mir. One needed some comforts in life.

“We’ll hold a wake,” Sergei decided. “In memory of Mr. Hadden.”

Jean-Pierre came floating in with the body bag and autopsy kit, the instruments stored in a large plastic Ziplock bag for the procedure. He went back out to retrieve the Crew Medical Restraint System – a long grey backboard with attachment straps, normally used to restrain ill or injured crewmembers, and kept stored in the CheCS. “We will secure him on this, then against the wall.” They maneuvered Mr. Hadden onto the backboard, his stiffened arms and legs floating in all directions until they restrained the errant limbs.

Sergei and Yurii wrapped bungee cords around the CMRS railings. There were plenty of handrails and attachment points on Pirs’s walls so they tied the cords to these. They set up the rest of the equipment as best they could, a difficult procedure in the cramped docking compartment as they bumped into each other. “I will do filming,” said Sergei, grabbing the small silver Sony PD-100 DVCAM camcorder, already loaded with a videocassette. He had wrapped a plastic bag around its body to protect it from contamination.

“Yurii, you operate the suction device,” ordered Jean-Pierre to the unenthusiastic Russian. This was stored in the U.S. Advanced Life Support Pack, and normally would be used to clear the mouth and airway of someone undergoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Jean-Pierre had assembled the device; it consisted of a curette tip, syringe, cartridge, hose barb and collection bag. “And keep the sample containers and Ziplock bags ready – I’ll need them for organ samples.”

Sergei grimaced and said to his friend in Russian, “You got the barf bags?” Yurii grabbed one from the equipment bag he was holding and handed it to Sergei. They spoke Russian to each other and English to Jean-Pierre, whose Russian was a bit shaky.

Joe, who had been hovering silently at the hatchway, said, “Jean, you ready to be sealed in now?” Jean-Pierre nodded. “Don’t forget, the rebreathers have a maximum life of one hundred and forty minutes, so I’ll come back in a couple of hours to see how you’re doing. There’s some more if you need them. I’ll make a note in the inventory that they’ll need to send up two more.” The Service Module’s ventilation and air ducts between it and Pirs had been deactivated. Joe sealed the hatch by inserting a hatch tool into a socket and ratcheting it closed. Sergei and Yurii felt as though they had been entombed. The airlock, with its ventilation fans turned off, was disconcertingly quiet.

Yurii donned the headset plugged into a comm panel. Joe, also wearing a headset, told them over another comm panel located outside the module, “I’ll get back in touch with Houston. Just call me over the PA if you need me.”

Yurii doffed the headset then double-checked that the hatch leading to the old Soyuz was firmly shut – the visiting crew would be departing in it.

Sergei turned on the camera and looked through the viewfinder out the egress hatch porthole of VL-1, one of Pirs’ two hatches, where the serene azure curve of the Earth could be glimpsed. I can’t wait to get out there.

Jean-Pierre asked them, “Have either of you witnessed an autopsy before?” They shook their heads. “Well, it is a fascinating procedure, and you might learn something. This is space medical history in the making,” he continued enthusiastically. “I’m not sure how microgravity will affect the procedure … still, we’ll see how things go.”

No comment from the Russians. I’m going to enjoy this, thought Jean-Pierre, glancing at them.

He had with him a dictaphone – a Russian miniature cassette recorder – used for recording results of some Russian experiments. The camcorder would also record speech.

They donned the rebreathers, removing each grey rubbery snout-like mask from its sealed container. The mask fitted over their faces, with two cross-straps securing it on their heads. The ISS Russian Segment Life Support System Study Guide gave instructions in their use:

The mask is stored in a sealed container and is used only once. It is always ready for use. The rebreather-type mask consists of the mask, a cartridge with an oxygen-containing compound, and a rebreather bag. The mask is connected to the cartridge by a flexible hose.

The cartridge is contained in a thermally-insulated case that is attached to the waist by a belt. The starter, a sulfuric acid capsule, and a starting briquette made of aluminum are installed on the cartridge.

To use, the mask must be removed from the container and donned, and the starter lever must be turned 180 degrees. When the starter is turned, the acid capsule is punctured and acid begins to react with aluminum oxide in the starting briquette. The oxygen released by this process provides the initial supply of oxygen to the crewmember.

As the crewmember continues to breathe, both water vapors and carbon dioxide react with the oxygen-containing compound to produce oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. The oxygen produced in this reaction is delivered to the mask and rebreather bag. Any excess oxygen is vented from the rebreather bag through the relief valve to the cabin.

The service life of the gas mask ranges from 20 to 140 minutes depending on the intensity of the wearer’s activity.

“Sergei, turn the camera this way, s’il vous plait.” Sergei did so reluctantly, sliding closed the egress hatch inner window shutter, then pushing up past the others so he floated above them out of their way. Jean-Pierre lifted his stuffy, uncomfortable mask so he could speak clearly into the miniature cassette recorder; he could only do this for three minutes maximum, else the chemical reaction would cut out. This is going to be a nuisance, he thought. But perhaps I can dub my voice over the film later. He released the dictaphone to float nearby. “Now, first I will measure the body ….” Jean-Pierre unfurled a retractable tape measure. “Subject is a seventy-four-year-old Caucasian male, approximately one hundred and seventy centimeters tall. I can’t weigh him in microgravity, but I would estimate his weight at around fifty to fifty-five kilos; he is quite frail. There are no discerning or unusual body abnormalities. Sergei, please do a full-length pan of the body – I’ll need you to come closer than that.

“Rigor mortis has set in, but there is no apparent liver mortis – settling of the blood at the lowest point of gravity in the body – that you would find in full gravity. The subject has been dead since last night. Time of death is uncertain, so I will take a rectal temperature. Yurii, please retrieve the thermometer. I will have to unstrap his legs ….” Jean-Pierre slipped his mask back on and lifted up Mr. Hadden’s legs so his skinny bare arse was visible. “Now, Yurii, I’ll get you to insert the thermometer –”

“Shit!” swore Yurii, looking horrified. “I’m not –”

Jean-Pierre gave his reluctant assistant a steely blue-eyed glare and Yurii, muttering muffled curses through his mask, drifted closer and poked the thermometer upwards in the general direction of Mr. Hadden’s rear end, trying not to look.

Sergei snorted, trying to suppress giggles. “Having some trouble docking, Yuroshka?”

Yurii snapped at him, “Why don’t you come and do it, then?”

“Oh, enough!” Losing patience, Jean-Pierre snatched the thermometer off Yurii and did the job himself. After glancing at the thermometer, he quickly disposed of it in a biohazard bag. “Decedent’s body-core temperature now matches the ambient twenty-three degrees Celsius, so it is at algor mortis. Normal human body temperature is thirty-seven degrees.”

“He was cold when we discover him,” Sergei interjected, lifting his mask.

“What time was that?”

“Um, before alarm goes off … maybe zero-three-thirty hours.”

“He would have been dead several hours … a body’s temperature drops two degrees in the first hour after death, then one-and-a-half every hour after in a constant ambient room temperature. Did Temir notice anything wrong with Mr. Hadden when they went to bed?”

“Nyet. Mr. Hadden was already sleeping when Temyusha turn lights out at nineteen-thirty hours. He says he not notice anything.”

“The ventilation noise in Pirs would cover any sounds Mr. Hadden might have made … I’ll give the time of death as the previous evening, then, around twenty hundred hours GMT.”

“That means Temyusha spent night sleeping with corpse,” Yurii observed.

“Now I will begin the opening of the trunk. Yurii, hand me the scalpel, s’il vous plait.” Yurii gingerly handed Jean-Pierre the razor-sharp implement. “I will begin the Y-incision.”

Jean-Pierre unsecured one of the torso straps so Mr. Hadden’s chest was exposed. He deftly cut two incisions from the front of each shoulder to the bottom end of the breastbone, then a deep cut from the xiphoid process to halfway down the abdomen. On Earth he would normally cut to the top of the pubic bone, but he did not want to expose the intestines too much. A few small droplets of dark blood oozed out. “Yurii, suction please.” Yurii aimed the curette tip at the blood droplets and pulled back the syringe; the droplets were sucked into the bag. Jean-Pierre then used the scalpel to separate the skin, muscle and soft tissues from the chest wall, peeling each flap back. But the lack of gravity meant that the flaps wouldn’t hang down; they just floated when Jean-Pierre released them. “Merde, this is a nuisance … but I think I can manage.”

Both Russians had turned as pale as the white T-shirt Yurii wore, the physician noted, and they were, for once, unusually quiet. There’s worse to come, Jean-Pierre thought, smiling inwardly. “Now, Yurii, I will need the rib-cutters ….” These were similar to pruning shears. Jean-Pierre worked them up the left side of the rib cage, grunting with the effort as the ribs separated with a wet crackling sound, then up the right side. He then pulled off the chest plate, some tissue and blood vessels underneath clinging to it like strands of cheese from a pizza. He used the scalpel to separate these, then disposed of the chest plate in a biohazard bag. His disposable gloves were now bloodstained, and loose droplets of blood had splattered the front of his T-shirt. There wasn’t that much blood, all things considering, as there was no circulation to propel it outwards, and much of it had congealed since Mr. Hadden’s death.

Mr. Hadden’s lungs and heart – the latter covered by the pericardial sac – were now exposed. They glistened deeply red, streaked with lighter pinks and white tissues, and yellowish fat deposits. Jean-Pierre carefully cut open the pericardial sac with the scalpel. “Both lungs and heart appear healthy; Mr. Hadden was obviously a non-smoker,” he noted. He sliced open the large pulmonary artery, then poked his gloved finger into the hole where it exited the heart. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “A blood clot – a thromboembolus – in the pulmonary. This is likely the cause of death; it would have formed suddenly as he was certified as healthy in his preflight medical exams – though I might note that he had a heart attack five years ago, but fully recovered.” Jean-Pierre sliced off the segment of artery that held the clot and placed it in a clear plastic screw-top biosample container, which was a little larger than a 35 mm film container, held out by Yurii. Yurii then put it into a Ziplock bag. “Please put that to one side, Yurii.”

To the dictaphone floating nearby, he said, “I am not tying off carotid and subclavian arteries as that procedure is only for embalming purposes. I also will not detach larynx as I am not removing organs. Now, I will slice samples from the heart, lungs, spleen, liver, kidneys and skeletal muscles ….” which he set about doing, digging around in the chest and abdominal cavities until he located each organ, shoving it back in when he had taken a small cubic sample.

As he grasped a kidney and made to slice a sample, the scalpel slipped and cut through the tendon which secured it in the intestinal cavity. The greasy, reddish-brown organ slid out of Jean-Pierre’s grasp and shot off on an upwards trajectory. “Merde!” Sergei flinched as the escapee sailed past his head to impact on the closed hatch at the top of Pirs, leaving a reddish stain. The kidney bounced off, wobbling gently, until Sergei gingerly retrieved it. “I think this yours, Jean-Pierre.”

“Merci.” Jean-Pierre took back the organ and cut the required sample. Sergei hurriedly wiped his gloved fingers on his grubby, blood-smeared T-shirt.

Unlike the two Russians, the physician seemed unperturbed by the slippery, bloody mess. Jean-Pierre was careful not to dislodge the intestines, which lay in Mr. Hadden’s abdomen like a coiled, cobalt-blue snake. The physician recalled his amazement at how long the intestines were when, years ago, they had been removed from a cadaver during his first anatomy class. “There are eight-and-a-half meters coiled up in there,” he informed his two assistants, who did not look particularly enthused at learning this tidbit.

Yurii imagined the intestines escaping and floating around the airlock, then hurriedly pushed the image away.

Jean-Pierre used a separate container and Ziplock bag for each sample, held open for him by a nauseated-looking Yurii who labeled each bag with a black marker pen as instructed by Jean-Pierre. “Yurii, please unwrap a syringe.” Jean-Pierre then poked the empty syringe into the pink bladder that was Mr. Hadden’s stomach and pulled back the plunger. “I am taking a sample of the gastric juices ….

“Now, I have finished taking samples here, so I will sew up the torso. Yurii, please thread the sail-maker’s needle for me.” Yurii did this deftly enough and handed the long needle to Jean-Pierre. “Now, I will need you to hold the flaps of skin together for me as I sew.” Yurii groaned almost inaudibly but did as instructed, his disposable gloves now as bloody as Jean-Pierre’s. The physician used a running or baseball stitch to roughly join the skin flaps.

“Sergei, please hand us some more disposable gloves.” Sergei had managed to keep a safe distance while filming, but now left the camcorder floating and reluctantly drifted nearer with the gloves, taken from a Ziplock bag full of them. He held open a biohazard bag for the others to put their used gloves into. Yurii then used the suction device and gauze pads to catch some stray droplets of blood floating about like tiny red rubies. Sergei quickly retreated back behind the camcorder’s viewfinder – it seemed to separate him somewhat from the gruesome procedure.

“Now, I will draw samples of the cerebrospinal fluid and vitreous humor.” Jean-Pierre unwrapped a pair of disposable syringes. “First, the eyes ….” To the Russians’ horror, he proceeded to jab the hypodermic needle straight into the corpse’s left eyeball; although Mr. Hadden was well beyond feeling anything, they winced in sympathy. Some of the clear jelly-like fluid that filled the retina was sucked into the syringe in the same manner as the gastric sample had been taken. He withdrew and put it in a small Ziplock bag. “The potassium level in the vitreous humor goes up after death at a measured rate, and will help pinpoint the time of death.

“Yurii, I will need you to unstrap him and turn him side-on so I can get at his spine.” Yurii undid the straps that held Mr. Hadden to the CRMS board, then gingerly held the body; he floated above Jean-Pierre as the physician performed a lumbar puncture for the spinal fluid sample. This completed, Mr. Hadden was re-strapped to the CRMS.

“We finish yet?” Yurii asked hopefully, as they took a breather.

“Non,” replied Jean-Pierre, and they looked crestfallen. “I still would like a brain sample ….” The Russians exchanged mutinous glances but Jean-Pierre ignored their discomfort and cheerily reassured them, “This is the last sample I need. Yurii, I’ll need the bone saw and skull chisel, and I’ll have to get you to hold Monsieur Hadden’s head steady. Sergei, you’ll have to handle the suction device.” To the dictaphone, he said: “I am about to perform scalp reflection.”

---

Joe, in the meantime, had made the mistake of talking to Bill the Flight Surgeon on S-band during the autopsy, and was feeling increasingly nauseated. “Fifty-five-point-eight days, approximately,” Bill said cheerily, “for Mr. Hadden’s body to decay if left on the ISS. There’s a simple formula pathologists use to work out the rate of soft tissue decomposition.”

“Thanks, Bill, I really needed to know that,” muttered Joe sarcastically. Bill was one of those eccentric medical types who delighted in regaling any captive audience with gruesome medical trivia.

“Of course,” Bill went on merrily, “there are no insects up there, so decay is from bacterial activity alone. Decomposition sets in four minutes after death. Then comes autolysis, self-digestion, where enzymes in the digestive system begin to eat away at the cells and the tissues liquefy. Putrefecation by micro-organisms such as bacteria also dissolves tissue and this initiates anaerobic fermentation – the release of gasses which causes a corpse to bloat. On Earth, activity by various insects – flies, ants, beetles – speeds up this process. On the Station, however, it would be like leaving the body in a sealed room. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it during its decay, though.”

“No,” said Joe faintly. He wondered if anyone else in the Houston MCC was listening in – they would surely be regretting it.

“There’s an institute called the ‘Body Farm’ near the University of Tennessee where human corpses are left out in the open so pathologists can study their rate of decay. Now there’s an experiment we could do on the ISS ….”

Joe made a strangled noise. Bill then asked, “How’s the autopsy going? They need any assistance?”

“Uh, they haven’t called over the PA, so I guess they’re doing okay.”

“I’d really like to speak to Jean-Pierre as soon as he’s available … the Russian doctors at the IMBP are keen to get details, too.” He referred to the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems in Moscow, which conducted research into space biology and medicine.

“I’ll be sure to let him know.”

---

Jean-Pierre frowned in concentration as he gazed at Mr. Hadden’s head, judging where to start. “He has little hair, so that makes things easier.” A network of bluish veins was visible through Mr. Hadden’s thin, parchment-like skin. He poked the point of the scalpel into the skin just above the corpse’s left ear, deep enough to touch the skull. Jean-Pierre floated above Yurii, bracing his feet on the docking hatch and grasping Mr. Hadden’s head with his free hand. “Yurii, hold his head tightly ….” Yurii positioned himself in front of the cadaver, holding Mr. Hadden’s head steady by gripping his cheeks with both hands.

Jean-Pierre then continued the deep incision up to the top of the skull, the knife grating on bone, the skin separating and gaping redly. Twisting awkwardly, he repeated the process on the other side so both cuts met up in the middle. “Yurii, I’ll need you to move out of the way for a minute; I’m going to pull the scalp over the face.” Yurii hurriedly backed off, pressing against the curved side of Pirs. Jean-Pierre somersaulted neatly, turned and positioned himself in front of the corpse. He grasped the gaping edge of the front scalp portion and pulled it hard as though rolling a sock off a foot. He grunted with effort as the scalp reluctantly separated from the skull with a sickening wet tearing sound; he was careful to pull along the curve of the scalp, not up away from it. He continued pulling down to just above the eyebrows, and Mr. Hadden’s face slackened and sagged dramatically downwards. The bared skull glistened crimson, as did the underside of the scalp, tags of flesh sticking to them.

It was too much for the Russians. Jean-Pierre heard retching noises behind him and turned to see Yurii, mask lifted, utilizing the barf bag he had fortuitously brought. Sergei managed to hang on to his breakfast, but only just; he looked as pallid as Yurii, his eyes glazed with shock.

Jean-Pierre had long grown accustomed to the gruesomeness of autopsies, but realized, I have forgotten what the first time is like. This part is probably the most disturbing. He said, in a more sympathetic tone, “I know this is hard for you two, but it will be over soon. Sergei, I need to turn him around ….” Sergei handed the camcorder to Yurii then came down to assist, undoing the straps as Jean-Pierre rotated Mr. Hadden, his dangling scalp flap and face waving gently, then secured him again. Sergei busied himself suctioning up blood droplets as Jean-Pierre tugged down the rear portion of the scalp.

They were all perspiring and close to exhaustion; they had been at this nearly an hour-and-a-half already. Pirs’ interior, unventilated, was becoming stuffy and warm. Jean-Pierre took hold of the bone saw and proceeded with the removal of the cranium. In full gravity he would normally use an electric Stryker saw, but this would have thrown up blood and bone particles in a fine mist – an unacceptable biohazard in the enclosed environment of the Station, as the High Efficiency Particulate Air filters might not trap all the particles, and clog up. So the physician laboriously and awkwardly sawed through the skull, careful not to cut too deep and damage the brain. With rest breaks, the procedure took around half an hour. He cut the forward portion in a V-shape so he could slot the skull section back on afterwards.

“Yurii, hand me the chisel and hammer, s’il vous plait.” Yurii retrieved the items, having now recovered some of his composure. Jean-Pierre used these implements to prise open and separate the top of the calvarium from the lower skull. He placed the skull segment in the air just above Mr. Hadden’s head, where it floated like a grotesque halo. Sergei sucked and soaked up oozing droplets of the clear cerebrospinal fluid which surrounded Mr. Hadden’s brain, the top half of which he could see exposed, and fought back nausea. “Yurii, get a sample container, please, and hold it ready.” Yurii gave Sergei back the camcorder, who in turn handed him the suction device. “Sergei, please take a film shot of the brain before I extract the segment ….

“Now, I will cut a segment from the cerebrum to take with us when we depart. I would normally remove the entire brain, but it is regrettably impossible under these circumstances – there are no adequate facilities to store and preserve it.”

His two assistants looked at each other, each thinking, We don’t regret that.

The physician then delicately cut a deep square section of the cerebrum and floated it up out of the cranium as though slicing and extracting a piece of cake. The folds of the cerebrum gave it a resemblance to a yellow-grey cauliflower, streaked with dark blood vessels. It was a soft and fragile organ with the consistency of jelly, so he was careful not to handle it roughly. Jean-Pierre glanced at his assistants; they were beyond any shock now, their eyes dull and glazed.

Of all autopsy procedures, the exposure of the brain was probably the most disturbing and violating. That lumpy one-and-a-half kilograms of grey matter contained a person’s dreams, personality, thoughts and memories – their very essence. Jean-Pierre was well aware that in his hands he held a part of what Mr. Hadden had been, but the brain’s occupant no longer existed in any known form. It was just dead meat. It is what we will all be, one day.

Yurii lifted his mask and muttered to Sergei, “I bet Mr. Hadden never thought he’d be returning to Earth in pieces.” Sergei bit back hysterical laughter, having a mental image of poor Temir and Jean-Pierre seated next to the vials containing what was left of Mr. Hadden at the Zvyozdyi Gorodok welcome-home reception.

The segment was duly placed in the container and labeled. “You have two available accumulators for the Kriogen, oui?” the physician inquired. This was the Russian biosample refrigerator located between panels 234 and 235 in Zarya, used to store vials of the crew’s blood, saliva and urine for various medical experiments.

“Da. We have two cold accumulators in for our samples on minus twenty-two Celsius setting,” Sergei told Jean-Pierre. “But there is still some space for Mr. Hadden.” Four of the accumulators could be fitted end-on into the Kriogen.

“Bon, it is already set at the right temperature.” The yellow AX-03 accumulators would themselves be placed in KB-03 thermally-insulated containers for the Soyuz return to Earth.

All the sample containers had themselves been stored in another yellow biohazard bag, which would be transported to the Kriogen and unloaded. And may that be the last we see of them, thought Yurii with a grimace. Jean-Pierre is welcome to have them.

“Now, I will sew the calvarium back on – another pair of gloves and more thread, Yurii, s’il vous plait ….” After changing his blood-slimed disposable gloves, Jean-Pierre fitted the top of the skull back on, closed up the scalp flaps and had Yurii hold them together as he quickly sewed the skin together.

“And, Dieu de merci, we have finished!” the physician announced with weary relief, glancing at his watch. “Just over two hours gone … we will put Mr. Hadden back into his sleeping bag, then the body bag and leave him here for the space burial. I will write up a preliminary autopsy report this evening.” Sergei unfolded the opaque white body bag and, after unstrapping Mr. Hadden from the CRMS, tied bungee cords around his arms and legs to keep them together. The Russians opened the rumpled sleeping bag and held it straight as Jean-Pierre awkwardly guided the stiffened body feet-first into it. They followed the same procedure to insert the cream-colored sleeping bag into the shroud, which was then zipped up.

The exhausted trio just floated for a few minutes to rest in the cramped airlock. Their sweat-soaked shorts and T-shirts were splattered with blood, and a few drops had stuck to the sides of Pirs, despite Sergei and Yurii’s best efforts with the suction device and gauze pads. They would have to wipe down the walls later with antiseptic wipes. The airlock would be exposed to vacuum when Mr. Hadden was taken outside to be buried, which would also help sterilize it.

Yurii removed his expired rebreather mask, blond hair matted with perspiration, and drifted over to the comm panel, donning the headset again, pressing the button which linked to the PA in Zvezda, then the TNG button. “Joe, we finish,” he said hoarsely.

“Okay, I’ll inform Houston,” responded Joe. “You guys feel up to eating dinner?”

Dinner, after that? Yurii went to say, but then realized that he was hungry – famished, in fact. They seemed to have been in the airlock for an eternity. “Jean-Pierre? Seryozha? You want dinner?” They both nodded, and he said “Da” to Joe.

“We’d better go clean up,” said Yurii.

Sergei grimaced as he pulled off the suction device’s collection bag, which was filled with blood. He hurriedly grabbed the bag’s open end before the blood could float out, and sealed it with grey tape. “What do I do with this?”

“Chuck it out the hatch when we take Mr. Hadden out,” Yurii suggested. Sergei shoved the blood-filled bag over to Mr. Hadden’s shrouded form and taped it to the corpse.

The docking hatch was pushed inwards with a rush of fresh air and Temir poked his head into Pirs’ now-stuffy atmosphere. His brown eyes widened when he saw the three in their bloodied clothes, and Mr. Hadden’s eviscerated corpse. There was a faint smell of raw meat. “You ready to come out?” he asked, trying not to gag. “Yes,” said Sergei as they divested themselves of the expired rebreathers. “Don’t turn the ventilation on yet, though.”

Jean-Pierre put the autopsy equipment into a spare bag; it would be cleaned later with wet-wipes. The visiting crew would take the Sony camcorder’s cassette back to Earth with them along with the KB-03 containers, no doubt to be eagerly scrutinized by various pathologists. Yurii’s used barf bag went into a biohazard rubbish bag as did the gauze pads; the soiled clothes and rebreathers were bundled up, secured with grey tape and stuffed into another bag. All this rubbish would be packed into the old Soyuz’s orbital module; when the visiting crew departed, this detached from the re-entry capsule on descent and burned up in the atmosphere.

Sergei, Yurii and Jean-Pierre cleaned themselves thoroughly, using a soapy water-filled bag and cloths, and antiseptic wet-wipes. Half an hour later, after re-dressing, they – along with Joe and Temir – wiped down the docking module’s walls and CRMS, taking turns as only two could fit in. They left the hatch open while doing this, but would not reinstall and turn on the ventilation until after the burial.

Dinner time

After their exertions everyone was ravenously hungry. For dinner there was Russian rations: Bream in Tomato Sauce; Pork with Potatoes, Honey Cake, Kuraga (dried apricots) and rehydrated tea with or without sugar; they could also have a slice of Moscow Rye bread. Temir had been heating appropriate items in the Russian food warmer.

“You guys look knackered,” said Joe, as they tucked in. “Are you sure you’re up to an EVA?” He directed this to Yurii and Sergei, who looked drawn and exhausted, and were unusually quiet. “Da,” they said in unison. Despite being rather shell-shocked, they were still stuffing their faces.

“What ceremony is being held?” asked Jean-Pierre. Joe had discussed the upcoming burial at the DPC on S-band.

“Well, Mr. Hadden apparently didn’t follow any particular religion, according to what his son and daughter told John, but Mr. Hadden did mention to them that if he died up here, a sea burial prayer might be suitable. So Houston are hunting down some, and they’ll e-mail us with whatever they find.”

“Why a sea burial?” asked Temir curiously.

“Is like in Star Trek,” interjected Sergei. (They had watched all the Star Trek movies in the Station’s DVD library.) “They always use navy words. We talk about space ships. Space is like big ocean. Up here, is like living on ship or submarine.”

Joe blinked at that. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Y’know, Bill Shepherd, who was the first Expedition Crew commander, was a Navy SEAL, and he reckoned that being up here was more like sailing than flying.” Regarding that nautical theme, Joe had, since yesterday, had a persistent little tune going around in his head, to the words of the old English sea shanty, What do we do with a drunken sailor?:

What do we do with a dead space tourist,
What do we do with a dead space tourist,
What do we do with a dead space tourist,
Early in the morning …?

He found himself humming the catchy tune at odd times of the day.

“Wish we could go somewhere, not just in circles,” muttered Sergei into his Borodinskiy Bread.

“I have set up Orlans in PkhO,” said Temir, changing the subject. “Start preparing them tomorrow.” “Double Trouble” nodded listlessly.

At least the autopsy shut those two up, thought Joe, but I guess it will only be temporary.

“Temir and Jean-Pierre, you two will have to don your Sokol suits and go power up and sit in the old Soyuz during the EVA,” Joe informed them. “It’s a standard precaution – if there’s an emergency you won’t be able to access it otherwise, as Pirs will be in vacuum.”

“Da,” said Temir. “We will seal off Soyuz and get changed in there. Jean, I move your things into new Soyuz – you sleep there with me for next two nights – and Mr. Hadden’s into old,” Temir added to the physician, who nodded acknowledgment.

“You’ve got a link up with France tomorrow, haven’t you, Jean?” Joe addressed him.

“Oui, with the Cité de L’Espace in Toulouse. I will be talking to students there,” Jean-Pierre said with more enthusiasm. Toulouse was the home of the French space agency, CNES.

“Tell them all about autopsy,” suggested Yurii slyly. “Very educational.” Jean-Pierre ignored him.

“Yurii, I’ll need you to refresh me on switching the Russian Segment to EVA mode before you go into the airlock.” Yurii nodded, finishing his last mouthful. Zvezda’s onboard computer system software could be manually configured to various modes via the laptops at the module’s TsP, central post computer workstation. Although Joe had been trained on the Russian systems, he preferred to leave its operation to his crewmates – and he, similarly, looked after the U.S. segment.

“The Transfer Compartment will be in vacuum also – Yurii and Sergei will need to don their suits in there – so I’ll be marooned in the U.S. segment,” Joe went on, for Temir and Jean-Pierre’s benefit. “If anything goes wrong – which isn’t likely – I’ll evacuate in the new Soyuz. I’ll have to activate its toilet, in any case.” Joe would not be able to access the ASU in Zvezda.

“You will leave us behind, yes?” Sergei teased Joe. “You will crash Soyuz without me.”

“You know very well that I can fly it,” Joe retorted. Well, he had done a basic training course, but he was nowhere near as experienced as Sergei. Sergei only grinned knowingly.

Yurii drifted over to a spare IBM ThinkPad in the Service Module and, after typing in his password (for this, like his crewmates, he used his first name), opened up Outlook Express. “Joe, we have e-mail from Houston.” E-mails were up- or downlinked three times a day in off-line folders; there was no direct Internet connection (to the crew’s dismay).

Joe floated over and peered at the screen.

From

John Curry/MCC Houston

To

joemclean@jsc.nasa.gov

Subject

Space Burial

Attach

Space Burial Eulogy

Joe,

One of our secretaries, Michele, found this (see attachment). Mr. Hadden’s family also liked it, so can you read it out over the comm link during the funeral? Wake-up for Friday is 00:00 GMT/20:00 EDT, with Sergei and Yurii to egress at 07:40 GMT/03:40 EDT from Pirs. American S- and Ku-band comm will not be available – Moscow has not requested it. You can set up the Glisser-M camera in order to provide a live downlink for Mr. Hadden’s family. The burial has been set for the next Russian Ground Site pass at 08:15 GMT/03:15 EDT for a 13-minute pass. Burial time at TsUP will be 11:15 DMT.

Regards, John

Yurii opened the attachment then sent a “Print” command to the Epson Stylus Color 800 printer situated in Zvezda’s command center, which spat out a page after its usual humming and fussing about.

“I thought they let us use American comm,” said Yurii.

“You know very well why they won’t,” Joe frowned. The two Russians, resentful that Houston had primary responsibility for ISS operations – Russia had essentially been relegated to a junior position in the “partnership” – rebelled any way they could. This included speaking only Russian to flight controllers (rather than English as the Mission Control Flight Rules stated) – and obscenity-laden Russian, at that. The exasperated Houston controllers had banned the pair from using American comm.

“Houston didn’t request that we use the Big Arm to film it, either – I guess they’re still pissed off about the whole space tourist thing and are snubbing the funeral.” NASA had furiously opposed the flight of the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, but Russia had defied them and sent Mr. Tito (ironically, himself a former NASA employee) anyway. NASA later insisted on drawing up a restrictive “Code of Conduct” for future prospective “guests”.

“Too bad. They don’t tell us what to do,” Yurii muttered resentfully. “We don’t need Arm, anyway.” The 17.6-meter Space Station Remote Manipulator System, or Canadarm was the multi-jointed robot arm mounted to the Power and Data Grapple fixture outside the Destiny module. The arm could also “inchworm” to the Mobile Base System on the Station’s Truss, enabling it to service various sites. It had four color TV cameras mounted on it, and was sometimes used to film EVAs (but not for Sergei and Yurii’s VKDs during their stay). Joe and Sergei had been trained in its use.

An External TV Camera Group was attached to the nadir side of the first starboard Truss segment at video port 5 (another was mounted on Destiny at video port 13). The cameras could be manually moved around various video ports (14 in all at Assembly Complete) in about 30 minutes during an EVA. Both this and the SSRMS were controlled from the Robotics Workstation in Destiny.

“If you and Houston were still on speaking terms, we could link the Russian video system to our Ku-band and downlink it to both centers … but never mind.” Joe sighed in exasperation. Ku-band coverage varied, up to 50 per cent per orbit; if there were a risk of lightning strike in Houston, the router there would be shut down. American comm was carried by TDRS satellite to the White Sands receiver and thence to Houston (and TsUP if necessary). The Russian television subsystem, which used SECAM/PAL, was not compatible with the U.S. segment’s NTSC signals, but the film could be transmitted from Moscow to Houston via their communications links.

“We will push Mr. Hadden from VL-1 hatch,” said Sergei. Pirs had two egress hatches, diagonally opposite to each other, and angled off-center to the ISS’s X-axis. VL-2 faced between forward and port; VL-1 faced aft and starboard. “Is better angle for Russian camera.” Positioning themselves here would also minimize the risk of collision between Mr. Hadden and the rest of the ISS when they pushed his body aftwards.

“Will NASA broadcast funeral on their website?” asked Temir curiously.

“Yes, on NASA TV … but I should think they’ll edit it. So no funny business, you two,” Joe said sternly to his Russian crewmates.

“What, us?” said Yurii, with his most angelic expression, hair like a short blond halo. “We would not dream of it.”

Suiting up

Friday

GMT	CREW	ACTIVITY
00:00-00:10	ALL	Morning inspection
00:10-00:40		Post-sleep
00:40-01:25	PLT, FE-1	Preparation of DC-1 and БСС for ВХД
01:25-01:40	CDR	Reroute C&W alarms from C&W panel (ПСС) to the ВХД support panels (ПОВ) in DC-1 and БСС
01:40-02:30	CDR	Pre-EVA systems configuration. Activation of Soyuz АСУ
02:05-02:40	PLT, FE-1	Orlans systems test
02:30-03:15	CDR	Deactivation of SM ventilation and air duct removal
02:40-03:05	PLT, FE-1	БСС сheckout in DC1
03:05-03:30	PLT, FE-1	Checkout of ORLAN Interface Unit (БСС) in ПхО
03:15-03:30	CDR	Pre-EVA comm setup
03:30-04:10	PLT, FE-1	Comm check. (Russian Ground Site pass: 03:33-03:53) Biomed parameters C/O
03:30-04:00	CDR
04:00-04:10	CDR	MO-8: setup
04:10-04:25	FE-1	MO-9: biochemical urine test
04:10-04:25	CDR	DC-1 air duct removal
04:10-04:25	PLT	Body mass measurement
04:25-04:40		MO-9: biochemical urine test
04:25-04:40	FE-1	Body mass measurement
04:25-05:25	CDR	Pre-ВХД configuration of ISS systems
04:40-05:00	PLT, FE-1	Final inspection of Orlans and БСС
05:00-05:20	PLT, FE-1	Checkout of ПхО O2 tanks БК-3 (1-4)
05:20-05:30	CDR	Daily U.S. payload status check
05:30-06:00	PLT, FE-1	Gear donning
06:00-07:40	PLT, FE-1	Airlock depress
07:40-08:15		Egress hatch OPEN. ВХД timeline ops
08:15-08:28		Russian comm pass; burial
08:28-10:00		ВХД timeline ops; last RGS pass 09:50-10:00; ingress
10:00-10:40		Egress hatch CLOSED. Repress airlocking

“BK-3 in PkhO are reading nine hundred and fifty millimeters pressure, Misha,” said Yurii to TsUP Ground Control during this Russian Ground Site pass, as Sergei checked the four portable oxygen tanks in Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment and gave Yurii a “thumbs-up”. “They appear nom-in-nal.” He used the English word – one much bandied about in NASA-speak – mockingly.

“Copy that, Yura,” acknowledged Mikhail, a spacesuit engineer who was their liason during comm passes. The oxygen tanks provided prebreathing oxygen for the wearers of Orlan suits until they switched to autonomous oxygen and power prior to exiting. They were normally taken into Pirs for VKD preparations, but the docking module was currently occupied …. “We report no anomalies.” Then, teasingly, he added, “How is our guest?”

“He is resting comfortably,” said Yurii, peering rather nervously down the PkhO-Pirs hatch interface at the body-bagged Mr. Hadden. “Looking forward to his last trip.”

“You’re moving out of range, so your next pass is during airlock depress,” Mikhail informed them. Yurii acknowledged him and signed off. He wore a black leather shlemofon, comm cap, connected via an electrical cord to the Korona set in the backpack of his suit.

“He’s beginning to smell, I’m sure of it,” said Sergei with a grimace. “I hope they give us an extra bonus.” Cosmonauts got bonus contract pay of the equivalent of $U.S.1000 – 30 560 rubles – for each VKDs added to their rather low base salaries of $250 or nearly 7640 rubles per month, as well as $100 or 3056 rubles for each day in orbit.

“Time to suit up,” said Yurii. They had thirty minutes allocated to this.

Sergei yawned. “I will sleep well tonight.”

“If we have no more bad dreams,” Yurii added. “Did I tell you about the one I had last night, where Mr. Hadden’s intestines were chasing me all over the Station –”

Sergei rolled his eyes. “Spare me the details.”

With Temir’s assistance, they had spent a busy day yesterday preparing the Orlan-M suits, compressing into a few hours procedures that would normally be spread over several days. This included leak checks and valve functions checkout on the suits and BSS interface units, pressure checks on the BK-3 oxygen and BNP repressurization tanks. They also tested suit communications with TsUP during Ground Site passes, as well as telemetry from the biomedical instrumentation harnesses they would wear next to their skins under their suits. These latter measured such parameters as heart rate and body temperature. Yurii had also prepared the Glisser-M TV camera that was to be taken outside. As well, there was the required two-and-a-half-hours’ daily exercise and forty-minute SOZh maintenance.

They had awakened at 00:00 GMT this morning and consumed special pre-VKD meals recommended by TsUP from previous spacewalk experience. Sergei had grilled pork chop in sweet & sour sauce with tvorog (cottage cheese with nuts); Yurii ate canned fish and tvorog. They both were to drink orange or peach juice before donning the suits; the sugars in these would provide energy. They similarly were to consume sweetened tea after the VKD.

They prepared the PkhO and Pirs for the VKD – this included deactivation of the PkhO’s fire detection mode, setting of 630 mm threshold limits for pressure sensors and the DSD (pressure alarm sensor), preparing Zarya’s PSS (caution and warning panels). Pirs’s air duct and B-3 fan had already been disassembled for the autopsy two days before – its ventilation was not reactivated because of the contamination risk.

They underwent the various medical procedures that were routinely done before and after VKDs: the Medical Operations-8 body mass measurement and MO-9 biochemical urine test.

The Russians, working from operations manuals, spent nearly two hours of the morning setting up and inspecting the Orlan suits and BSS, including various functional and leak checks with the Orlans’ backpack doors closed. These came up nominal, so the pair proceeded with comm checks, plugging in their comm caps’ cords into the Orlans’ Korona radio sets inside the suits’ backpacks and switching to channel 3, the VHF-2 frequency, speaking with TsUP when in Ground Site range. In the previous twenty minutes – 04:40-05:00 – they had unstowed their personal gear bags kept near the suits. Mirrors, used to check readings on the Orlans’ chest-mounted control panels, were inserted into pockets on the right and left arms. Watches were secured onto both suits’ right arms. The Swiss-made Fortis watch had been the official cosmonauts’ watch since 1994.

They fixed 1.5 meter-long towing tethers to the suits’ backpacks, tucking the other hooked end into the left leg pocket on the suit. Hooks for the two shorter tethers went into the right leg pocket. They removed the suits’ grey protective cloth helmet covers, and wiped each helmet’s inner visor glass surface with anti-fog paste. They ensured the gloves’ locking rings attached correctly. The suits’ fabric backpack covers were zipped closed after final inspection of the backpack’s integral mechanisms: feedwater tubes which linked to their cooling garments, the LP or LiOH canister and oxygen valves.

Each suit was plugged via an umbilical cord into the POV, a support panel which provided electricity and oxygen until the suits were switched to their autonomous power supplies.

In Zvezda, Joe (with Temir’s help) had to deactivate the Vozdukh carbon dioxide remover, place the Elektron oxygen generator in 16 amps mode and disassemble the air duct between Zvezda’s Working Compartment, RO, and the PkhO. Joe also activated the new Soyuz’s toilet as he would be cut off from Zvezda during the VKD.

The remaining two visitors, Temir and Jean-Pierre, provided an added complication, for they would have to spend the duration of the VKD in the old Soyuz docked to Pirs (they had both retrieved their possessions from the new Soyuz). As Pirs would be in vacuum, the hatches between the docking compartment and spacecraft would be sealed shut. This Soyuz’s ASU was thus also activated by Temir.

Joe came drifting through at that moment from Zvezda, followed by Jean-Pierre and Temir. “Guys, I’ve configured the Station for EVA, so you can close the hatch here. I’ll see you guys in …” – he looked at his watch – “five hours or so. I’ll be listening in. Remember, if there’s any contingencies with Pirs, ingress through Quest’s Crew Lock.” Joe could activate the CL via vacuum access jumpers.

“Da, Joe. Do svidaniya, Joe,” said Sergei with some amusement as Joe headed off into Zarya. Joe turned and pushed down the plug-like hatch, PGO-SU. He retrieved fixer and hatch tools from an accessories kit bag secured near the hatch, and an extension tool from the Soyuz Habitation Module, BO. He used the fixer tool to tightly close the hatch, then inserted the hatch tool into the ПРИВОД КРЫШКИ (HATCH ACTUATOR) socket and rotated it for three turns in the direction of the ЗАКРЫТЬ (CLOSE) arrow until it clicked. Sergei then followed the same procedure for the PkhO-SU hatch on his side.

СМ (ПрК)	1.	Retrieve hatch tool 11Ф732.Г1021-0А from accessories kit СтА 11Ф732.Г4000Ф1-30
Soyuz (БО)	2.	Retrieve seal wipes from accessories bag СтА 11Ф732.Г1000-540
Hatch ПГО-СУ	3.	Wipe rubber seals using seal wipes
	4.	Remove fixer tool and tightly close hatch cover shut
	5.	√ Flag switch on hatch tool → РАБОЧЕЕ ПОЛОЖЕНИЕ (WORKING POSITION) Insert hatch tool into hatch socket ПРИВОД КРЫШКИ (HATCH ACTUATOR) (use extension tool 11Ф732.Г1000-560) Hatch tool → indirection of arrow ЗАКРЫТЬ (CLOSE) until it clicks (3-4 turns)
СМ (ПрК)	6.	Stow hatch tool into accessories kit СтА 11Ф732.Г4000А1-30
Soyuz (БО)	7	Stow extension tool into accessories bag СтА 11Ф732.Г1000А1-540

“Schastlivo, guys!” Temir gave his friends a farewell hug each, then he and Jean-Pierre headed down into Pirs then through the docking module into the Soyuz, turning to push up and close its hatch, while Sergei, following him, similarly shut and sealed Pirs’s nadir hatch.

The pair retrieved their personal gear bags and proceeded to don their VKD gear after removing their flight clothes. First came gigienicheskie plavki – essentially, adult diapers (it was a short VKD, but it might be extended for some reason and there was nothing worse than spending several hours in a spacesuit with a bursting bladder). The biomed harnesses came next – adhesive sensors were placed behind the right ear and on the torso, and the harness connectors plugged into X9 connectors through the open backpack. The cooling garments were pulled out of the spacesuits. They pulled on socks and a white undergarment that resembled long johns. The blue KVO, liquid cooling garment, went over this; it was laced with thin tubes through which water was circulated from the Orlan backpack, carrying away the metabolic heat its wearer produced.

Black leather shlemofony, ShL-10 comm caps, went on their heads – the connectors plugged into X3 sockets in the backpack. Over the comm cap the hood of the cooling garment was pulled and secured with Velcro. A pair of thick warm red-black socks provided extra insulation over their thin white cotton ones. On their hands went white hygienic under-gloves; a cord from the white undergarments looped around their thumbs so the sleeves didn’t slide up.

Yurii and Sergei both grabbed the sachets of their fruit juice drinks (peach and blackcurrent juice, respectively) and drained these. Finally, it was time to ingress their suits. Sergei got into his first – he, designated VKD-2, had the number-14 blue-striped suit, Yurii, VKD-1, the number-12 red – sliding his bony limbs into the suit’s arms and legs after entering via the backpack, whose door, hinged on the left, swung open like a refrigerator’s. The one-piece suit was easier to don than the American EMU, the latter needing in-flight assembly. The Orlans required much in-flight maintenance, though this wasn’t a big hassle if you were the mechanically-minded sort who liked tinkering.

To the uninitiated, the interior of the Orlan-M backpack was a bewildering tangle of pipes, tubes and metal cylinders. It contained both BK-3 primary and reserve oxygen tanks, nine hours’ worth of oxygen plus thirty minutes’ reserves – VKDs were, however, normally limited to around 6 hours due to consumables constraints. A LP-9 or LiOH canister, also with 9 hours’ life (including time spent in the airlock) filtered out exhaled carbon dioxide, via a bed of chemicals that absorbed and bound the CO₂. Also in the backpack were a feedwater bladder, two pumps (primary and backup) and lines for the cosmonaut’s cooling garment and a BRTA telemetry unit containing the Tranzit-A radiotelemetry subsystem. This last fed telemetry to TsUP via the Tranzit-B hardware and BITS-2-12 system in Zvezda’s Work Compartment (activated earlier by Yurii).

Yurii checked his friend’s backpack seal for any obstructions, then Sergei pulled shut the backpack door via a cable lanyard that snaked around the left of the suit. Using a fastening ring on the end of the wire he hooked it over an attachment point on the suit’s front. He latched and sealed the door with the metal locking handle on the right below his hand, pulling it up; Yurii double-checked that it was properly closed. The two men had done several VKDs together on the ISS (Yurii a couple on Mir) and were well-practiced in suiting-up; they thus spoke little.

Sergei sometimes wondered what would happen if the door was to come open during an VKD; he had a mental image of the hapless cosmonaut inside being sucked out – schloop! – into the vacuum. His trainers had firmly stated that such an occurrence was very unlikely.

Mounted on his suit’s chest were the controls for the Korona communications radio, caution and warning panel, suit and oxygen pressure gauges to his upper right. To his lower left was the PGPU, pneumohydraulic control panel, which activated and regulated his oxygen supply. He ran through a check of the PGPU controls and turned on the switches to activate the Korona. Most instructions and markings on the front of his suit were in reversed letters so he, looking downwards, could read them from his wrist mirror. On the BSS, spacesuit interface unit, he turned a large blue knob that opened the oxygen flow into his suit.

All Sergei could hear now was his own rasping breathing inside the claustrophobic helmet as he assisted Yurii through the same procedure. Yurii’s suit, adjusted with straps in the arms, legs and torso, was noticeably shorter than Sergei’s. Once Yurii was suited, they ran through final leak and communications checks. They then began the depressurization sequence for the PkhO and Pirs, activating the KVD, pressure equalization, and KSD, depress valves. The pressure was initially brought down from the normal 600 mm to 550 mm and ensuring that the BK-3 portable oxygen tanks weren’t leaking – they would have to cancel otherwise. Thirty minutes of prebreathing pure oxygen came next, so as to saturate their blood streams with oxygen. This reduced the risk of decompression sickness – the bends – by eliminating the nitrogen that would otherwise accumulate there, forming bubbles which clogged up capillaries and blocked oxygen supply to the brain and other vital organs, with obvious unpleasant or fatal consequences. As the Orlans were pressurized to a higher level than the American EMUs, they did not require the longer and more complicated sequence of the latter, which made the Orlans ideal for hurried contingency VKDs.

PkhO/Pirs depressurization – including purge and leak checks – took one hour and 40 minutes, from 06:00 to 07:40. (Repressurization took forty minutes.)

A fifteen-minute Russian Ground Site pass was scheduled from 06:40 to 06:55. “TsUP, you read me?” asked Sergei through his link, over bursts of static and snatches of ghostly other voices. The VHF frequency was also used by air traffic control, aircraft and ham radio operators far below, and there was always some overlapping interference.

“Reading you clearly, Seryozha,” answered Mikhail. His voice sounded hollow and tinny over the link. He gave the cosmonauts a rundown of spacesuit and biomedical data. “Everything’s nominal,” the engineer concluded. He added, “Guys, our web sites are getting so many ‘hits’ the servers crashed a couple of times!” He referred to the NASA and Energiya web sites.

“That’s the most attention we’ve had for months,” Yurii remarked sardonically.

“Da, Houston told us that the space program hasn’t received so much publicity since John Glenn’s Shuttle flight! It’s made headlines around the world.”

“Maybe we should hold funerals more often!”

“Next pass is the funeral. We’ve got a big audience here – Mr. Hadden’s family are here at TsUP, also.”

“How are they taking this?” Sergei asked curiously.

“They are sad, of course, but they said their father would love going out this way.” Mr. Hadden’s adult son, daughter and grandchildren had flown to Baikonur to see his launch, but had been taken back to Moscow. “Moving out of range, now.” His voice vanished in a squeal of static.

“Joe, we have finished pre-breathe. PkhO, Pirs pressure stable,” Yurii said to Joe, listening over internal comm. “We begin final air purge.”

“Copy that. Zvezda’s SB-two and SB-four solar panels are feathered.” The twin panels had been turned edge-on to the airlock so air expelled from the depressurizing modules would not send any particles or debris impacting on the delicate solar cells. Joe could control functions in the Russian segment via a laptop he had taken with him into Zarya, connected beforehand by an Ethernet cable to the Service Module’s BKU, Onboard Control Complex computer system. He talked to the pair via the InPU, Integrated Control Panel in Zvezda’s Work Compartment, via the VHF-2 channel (as could Temir and Jean-Pierre over their Sokol comm caps).

Exits from the Russian airlock had a couple of disadvantages compared to Quest EVAs. The ISS was divided in two as the PkhO was in vacuum, and the air replenishment tanks were more limited (the air vented to space would be replaced from oxygen and nitrogen tanks in the Progress after the VKD). Quest could support both Russian and American spacesuits. Pirs was more of an interim module until the better-equipped FGB-2 was eventually launched.

“Down to five millimeters,” said Yurii sometime later after checking the modules’ MV, pressure gauges. “Orlan pressure at zero-point-four. Switch to autonomous power.” They both turned off and detached their suits’ electrical and fluid umbilicals.

Interstellar undertakers

“I will set up camera. You then bring out Mr. Hadden,” Yurii instructed Sergei, who, looking down at him from the PkhO, pulled a face at him from inside his helmet. In their bulky cream-colored spacesuits and with Mr. Hadden waiting silently nearby, there was barely enough room for the three of them in Pirs.

Sergei had the Glisser-M TV camera nearby, ready to hand it to Yurii before he exited the hatch. Yurii would have to plug a 2.8-meter cable trailing from a connector in the PkhO into an exterior connector on Plate #5 at the top of Zvezda, then another 25-meter cable was linked from there to the camera. Yurii had attached a portable bracket to the Glisser-M so it could be mounted on a convenient outside handrail on Zvezda.

Sergei had also decided to bring out the Nikon F-5 still camera to take some shots of Mr. Hadden’s burial for his family. This camera used conventional ISO-100 35 mm film; he had loaded it with a 36-exposure roll which he would give to Jean-Pierre before the Frenchman departed.

“Joe, am proceeding to open hatch.”

“Okay … you’ve got around ten minutes till sunrise and thirty-five minutes until the burial.” With the current solar beta angle at minus nine degrees, orbital nights were around 32 minutes and days 60 minutes – the length of these altered with the solar beta cycle throughout the year. “Station attitude is on ‘hold,’ and Zvezda’s thrusters are inhibited.”

Yurii grabbed the grey hatch tool bag secured nearby. Pirs’s two one-meter-diameter hatches opened in a similar manner to others in the Russian segment. He double-checked the compartment’s pressure – it read 2 mm. The pumps could not get rid of all the air. Yurii checked the hatch tool tab was in РАБОЧЕЕ ПОЛОЖЕНИЕ (Working Position) He selected a hatch tool and engaged it on the hatch drive shaft, turning it in the direction of arrow ОТКР. (Open) to the hard stop. He moved the pusher handle until the pressure was equalized – a vacuum on both sides – and pulled the blue-painted VL-1 hatch open, tugging at it a little against the last slight resistance of remaining air. He floated the hatch free and secured it to a restraint lock.

“Joe, I exit now at seven-forty. Go to fix camera.” Sergei floated down and handed him the camera. “Seryozha, turn on sublimator.” This device, its controls located on the PGPU panel on their suits, evaporated the heat from the coolant water flowing through their suits. They moved the temperature control handle up to the maximum of 6, then back to between 3 and 4, and checked that the ТО-ОКТЛ indicator was depressed. After ensuring the sublimator was operating, they adjusted the handle so the Orlans were a comfortable temperature. The suits had to protect their wearers from temperatures of +270 degrees Celsius in sunlight and −270 degrees in shadow.

“We could be at the bottom of the ocean,” Sergei remarked, squinting into the intense blackness outside; their eyes needed a few minutes to adjust. Yellowish CNO, “underwater” floodlights, illuminated portions of the Russian segment; beyond this was an impenetrable void. “Looks creepy. Joe, where are we?”

“Over the North Atlantic,” replied Joe (after consulting the World Map display on his laptop).

Eyes now dark-adapted, Sergei glanced up to see the Milky Way in its full glory, millions of stars scattered like diamonds across velvety blackness, visible with a clarity unknown on Earth. One of the ironies of residing on the ISS was that there were no upward-facing windows, so they could only get partial glimpses of the night sky through side windows. He and Yurii took every opportunity during a VKD to stargaze at the awesome vista. This is why we come up here, he thought.

Yurii looked forwards at Zarya, stretching away from him towards the American segment, linked to it by Pressurized Mating Adapter-1. Zarya, though built and launched in Russia, had been funded by the Boeing Corporation – a small American flag was painted on the module – so the only wholly Russian modules were Zvezda and Pirs. Yurii suppressed the simmering anger he always felt when thinking about how his country’s once-independent space program had been compromised by uncaring politicians.

“Tovarishch, you are ‘go’ for egress!” Sergei announced to Yurii.

“We copy that, Houst– uh, Seryozha,” replied Yurii with mock formality. They loved to poke fun at NASA-speak. Holding the insulation-covered camera in one hand, Yurii floated through the hatch, grasping one of the annular handrails surrounding it. The docking port was covered with padded white insulation. Its name was painted in red Cyrillic letters – ПИРС – along with the Russian flag and the name and logo of ЭНЕРГИЯ, Energiya. Yurii reached down and touched the flag and muttered “Ura Rossiya!” – his and Sergei’s pointed little ritual when they came out here.

To either side of Pirs’s base, which pointed towards Earth, were the two Strela cranes, GStM-1 and -2, used for transferring cargo and cosmonauts from one section to another. They rested in their folded-up stowed position, the bases attached to Pirs’s, the ends secured with tethers to attachment points on Zarya. Docked to Pirs was the old Soyuz, attached to its nadir port like a determined suckling piglet, its charcoal-colored thermal insulation rendering it nearly invisible. Temir and Jean-Pierre were now safely ensconced there in their white-and-blue Sokol pressure suits. They would be able to watch the action through one of the spacecraft’s two portholes in its landing module. Jean-Pierre had borrowed the Sony PD-100 DVCAM to film the burial as best he could from his portside window. The Soyuz also had two solar panels; fortunately the starboard one was angled forwards, so it would not be in the way of Mr. Hadden’s flight path.

Yurii moved with practiced ease, clipping and unclipping his two short tethers. Yurii and Sergei were experienced in such translation techniques. It was a tedious way to travel, but necessary for safety – if one of them floated away, there was no way of going after him. Yurii made his way up to the 1.8-meter-long VU, an exterior ladder jutting out directly above the hatch. This functioned as a bridge between Pirs and Zvezda and, like hatch BL-1, was angled between the Station’s starboard side and aft end. Yurii decided to fix the camera bracket on the annular rails circling the forward nadir end of Zvezda’s Work Compartment.

Sergei, in the meantime, turned to Mr. Hadden who, trussed up in his body bag, resembled an oversized pupa. “I retrieve Mr. Hadden, Joe.” He warily drifted over to the corpse, his mind’s eye replaying scenes from various horror movies where corpses suddenly come to life with evil intentions. He noticed that the congealed blood in the collection bag taped to the body bag had frozen into dark reddish ice crystals.

“I wonder what he looks like, now he’s in a vacuum?” Yurii mused.

“All shriveled up like an Egyptian mummy, I should think,” Sergei said. “All the fluid in your body rushes out if there’s any breaches in your skin.”

“Where’d you find that out?”

“I asked Jean-Pierre.” Sergei unclipped the bungee cords holding Mr. Hadden in place. “Okay, I’m bringing him out.” He turned with the corpse and carefully floated it over to the hatch. “How you going with the camera?”

“I have turned it on and am focusing. Sunrise coming up.” The thin band of the atmosphere along the Earth’s horizon was lightening noticeably as dawn approached and the ISS sped east at 27,621 kilometers an hour. Looking to their left and forward, they watched a thin streak of blue appeared along the Earth’s horizon as the ISS traveled eastward; orange emerged beneath it as the sun’s rays bent through the colors of the spectrum. They could briefly see the dark anvil silhouettes of cumulonimbus clouds reaching up 18,000 meters into the stratosphere, then the sun itself rose over the horizon. They squinted against its blinding brilliance as they hastily pulled down their outer visors, coated with gold to protect their eyes against the sun’s deadly unshielded ultraviolet rays.

“Look – angel’s wings.” Zarya’s solar panels and the huge thirty-four-meter-long photovoltaic arrays of the American segment had rotated so the hundreds of solar cells on their top sides would catch the first rays of the rising sun. The light shone golden through the Russian panels’ translucent fiberglass surfaces and around the edges of the photovoltaic arrays like glowing embers, the beautiful effect giving rise to the nickname. Anyone on Earth looking upwards at that moment would have seen the ISS as a rapidly moving silver-golden point of light. Around seven minutes later, dawn touched the Earth’s surface far below.

“Camera is in focus. Joe, you getting image?” Joe was in Zarya to monitor the Russian segment laptop.

“Yes, I can see your image on the TV.” Joe looked at the screen of a portable TV linked by cable to Zvezda. Yurii, looking through the viewfinder, angled the camera so as to cover the hatch and some of the path along which the body would travel. The camera was in a fixed position and would not be able to track the body’s movement away from the ISS. “Joe, I will come up here, manually track body after we push it,” Yurii said.

Yurii came back down to aid Sergei in hauling Mr. Hadden through the hatch. Sergei secured both their long tethers to handrails placed inside Pirs. Attaching a short tether to the annular handrails just outside, Yurii caught hold of the body and began to pull it through.

“Shit!” Yurii suddenly let out a startled yelp and nearly let go of the corpse. “He moved!”

“What?” exclaimed Sergei, thinking that they were about to re-enact one of those horror movies.

“It is escaping gases from anaerobic fermentation,” Jean-Pierre broke in over the comm. “Perfectly normal.”

The two shaken Russians maneuvered themselves into position, which proved to be somewhat awkward. There was a foot platform called the Yakor’ which the operator of the Strela crane used to anchor himself.

“I will stay inside, and you outside,” said Sergei. “You hold Mr. Hadden’s feet and I will push on his shoulders.” Yurii, his long towing tether attached to a rail inside Pirs, clambered down to the Strela and slid his feet into the restraints on the Yakor’. He faced outwards, backpack pressed against the module’s side. Sergei, similarly tethered, straddled the hatch rim, placing one foot on a handrail below him. “I am lowering him now.” Yurii grabbed Mr. Hadden’s feet. “I got him.” He angled Mr. Hadden so he pointed to the right of the crane’s base.

Joe, watching on the TV monitor, tried not to laugh at the sight of the two cosmonauts gingerly holding the body-bagged corpse, its feet pointing towards Earth.

“You’re almost in range again,” Joe told them a few minutes later. As they passed the Prime Meridian, they would come into range of the tracking station at St. Petersburg, which relayed VHF-2 comm and TV signals to TsUP in Moscow. “Coming up to Europe. You’re about fifty degrees on the descending node.” He referred to their latitude and the Station’s direction – downwards and southwards – on its sine curve track displayed on the World Map. The starboard side of the ISS faced south in its current attitude of Local Vertical, Local Horizontal.

Static and crackling over their headsets, then “Privet again, guys,” said Mikhail from TsUP. “You ready to launch?”

“Da,” muttered Yurii. “I’m getting a cramp.” He shifted his grip on Mr. Hadden’s shroud.

“You know what the media are calling you? ‘Interstellar Undertakers’.” Mikhail pronounced the nickname in English.

Yurii snorted. “We can add that to our resumés.”

“How, exactly, are we going to ‘bury’ Mr. Hadden?” Sergei asked.

“Just push him away from you, down towards the Earth, as hard as you can,” Vladimir, the Flight Director, interjected. “His orbit will decay eventually.”

“How long will that take?”

“Hours, days, weeks … it depends on atmospheric drag and the level of solar activity.”

“You mean, he could be hanging around here for –”

“Sergei Aleksandrovich, just get on with the burial,” said Vladimir, sounding more than a little weary. Sergei grinned, envisioning the senior flight director’s exasperated expression. “Double Trouble” had that effect on Vladimir (and many others) – though he suspected Vladimir’s gruffness was an act.

Below them the continent was almost entirely cloud-covered, but through gaps they could see glimpses of dark fir forests, patchworked fields, the snow-crested folds of the Alps and the greys of urban areas. Western Europe was one of the most densely-populated regions on Earth. The groundtrack would take them over Eastern Europe, with Ukraine and Russia to the east – they would not pass near Moscow during this orbital cycle. Sergei and Yurii felt a sudden longing to be back down there, a feeling they occasionally experienced, and one familiar to long-term spacefarers. When they were on Earth they longed to be in orbit, but up here they sometimes felt homesick.

“We’re ready when you are,” said Mikhail.

“Joe, you have eulogy ready?” Yurii asked the commander, in his stilted English.

“Yeah, just a sec’ ….” muttered Joe as he unfolded the printout. Joe had no idea how to go about conducting a funeral, so he just plunged into it, clearing his throat nervously. “Ahh … it’s eight-nineteen hundred hours and we on board the International Space Station are about to bury our, um, guest, Stephen Hadden, who sadly passed away on Tuesday night.” He was not accustomed to reading poetry, and he stumbled over the words awkwardly.

“Far above this Earthly domain
We are gathered here in place
To commit the mortal remains
Of our brother, Stephen Hadden, to space.

“In that world beyond ours
May he forever know peace
As we return his body
To the eternal deep.

“From the stars we were formed
In the depths of time
And to the stars we return
At the end of our lives.

“We wish our brother farewell
As into eternity he embarks
May the Universe embrace him
In her welcoming darkness.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
In God’s mercy do we trust.”

A pause, then, “Okay, you are go for burial.”

Sergei and Yurii exchanged glances. “You ready?” Yurii asked. “Yes,” Sergei affirmed. They braced themselves as best they could.

“One – two – three – push!” They pushed Mr. Hadden away from them as hard as they were able, angling to the starboard side and down, opposite to the ISS’s direction of travel. The body bag drifted away, beginning its slow descent towards Earth. The creamy-white shroud glowed brilliantly as it moved out of the Station’s shadow into sunlight. Yurii freed himself from the Yakor’ and pulled himself up beside Sergei, pausing on his way to the Glisser-M camera.

“Bombs away!” Sergei exclaimed in English, unable to stop himself, as he raised his camera to take a few shots.

“Bon voyage,” murmured Jean-Pierre over comm, as Mr. Hadden drifted past the Soyuz.

“At least he gets a free cremation,” Yurii quipped. Sergei punched him on the shoulder. The weary cosmonauts watched as Mr. Hadden sailed into eternity.

Interstellar Undertakers: Cosmonauts perform the first space burial

By Nadia Milaya for The Moscow Times

Moscow, Russia – In a historic first for the space program, a space burial was performed from the International Space Station during a 2-hour EVA by Russian cosmonauts Sergei Konstantinov and Yurii Zolotyov, who are currently residing there as part of an Expedition Crew along with U.S. commander Joe McLean.

The deceased was Stephen Hadden, a billionaire space tourist who arrived on board the ISS as part of a Soyuz “taxi” crew and was midway through his stay when he was discovered to have died in his sleeping bag two nights ago. He had apparently requested a space burial if he should perish on the ISS. His demise appears to have been due to a “myocardial infarction” or heart attack – heart failure from old age (he was 74) – and there are no suspicious circumstances.

Moscow ISS Flight Director Vladimir Solov’yov has denied rumors that an autopsy was carried out, though he did state that some “tissue samples” were taken from Mr. Hadden for the pathology report, to be brought down on the returning Soyuz taxi.

The burial was downlinked through Russian ground sites to Moscow, and also shown as a delayed telecast on NASA TV, taking place at approximately 12:15 p.m. MST. Commander McLean read a short eulogy, and Konstantinov and Zolotyov, tethered outside the Pirs airlock in their spacesuits, propelled the shrouded body downward towards the Earth, where it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up.

Mr. Hadden’s adult son, daughter and grandchildren – who came to Baikonur to see Mr. Hadden’s launch – watched the funeral broadcast at TsUP or Moscow Mission Control in the suburb of Korolyov. They described it as a “moving experience”. “Dad would have loved it,” his daughter said.

Flight Director Solov’yov said that neither Russia nor NASA had plans to start a space funeral business, though he admitted that public interest in the space program hadn’t been this high in a long time.

Appendix

NASA acronyms

ALSP

Advanced Life Support Pack

AMP

Ambulatory Medical Pack

ASAP

As Soon As Possible

ATU

Audio Terminal Unit

C&W

Caution & Warning

C/O

Check Out

CCPK

Crew Contamination Protection Kit

CEVIS

Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System

CHeCS

Crew Health Care System

CL

Crew Lock

CMRS

Crew Medical Restraint System

CPR

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

DPC

Daily Planning Conference

DVCAM

Digital Video Camcorder

EDT

Eastern Daylight Time

EMU

Extravehicular Mobility Unit (U.S. space suit)

ESA

European Space Agency

ETVCG

External TV Camera Group

EVA

Extra-Vehicular Activity

GCTC

(Yurii) Gagarin Cosmonauts’ Training Center (TsPK)

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time (time system used on ISS)

HMS

Health Maintenance System

IBM

International Business Machines

ISS

International Space Station

LiOH

Lithium Hydroxide

LSS

Life Support System

LVLH

Local Vertical, Local Horizontal

MAG

Maximum Absorbent Garment

MO

Medical Operations

NASA

National Aeronautics & Space Administration

NSTC

National Telemetry/Television Standards Committee

PMA

Pressurized Mating Adapter

RED

Resistive Exercise Device

RGS

Russian Ground Sites

SECAM/PAL

Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire (Sequential Color with Memory)/Phase Alternating Line

SM

Service Module (Zvezda)

SSRMS

Space Station Remote Manipulator System

TDRS

Tracking & Data Relay Satellite/s

TVIS

Treadmill with Vibration Isolation System

VHF

Very High Frequency

French glossary

Assez!

Enough!

Bon

Good

CNES: Centre National d’Études Spatiales

French Space Agency

Dieu de merci!

God be thanked!

Merci

Thank-you

Merde!

Shit!

Non

No

Oui

Yes

S’il vous plait

Please

Russian glossary

Russian transliterations:

ASU: Assenizatsiya Sistema Ypravleniya

АСУ: Ассенизация Система Управления

Sewage disposal system management

B-3

Б-3

Babushka

Бабушка

Grandmother

BITS: Bortovaya Informatsionnaya Telemetricheskaya Sistema

БИТС: Бортовая Информационная Телеметрическая Система

On-board data telemetry system

BK-3

Блоки Кислородный СК (скафандр)

On-board Oxygen Tanks (spacesuit)

BKU: Bortovoi Kompleks Upravleniya

БКУ: Бортовой Комплекс Управления

Onboard Control Complex

BNP: Blok Nadduva Perenosnoi

БНП: Блок Наддува Переносной

Portable Repress Tank

BO: Bytovoi Otsek TK (Transportnyi Korabl’)

БО: Бытовой Отсек ТК (Транспортный Корабль)

Soyuz Habitation Module (crew transport vehicle)

BRTA: Blok Radiotelemetricheskoi Apparatury

БРТА: Блок Радиотелеметрической Аппаратуры

Radio-telemetry unit/apparatus (Orlan)

BSS: Bortovaya Sistems Stykovki SK s bortom

БСС: Бортовая Система Стыковки СК с Бортом

Orlan (spacesuit) Interface Unit

Chto? (pronounced “Shto”)

Что?

What?

CNO: Cvetil’nik Naruzhnogo Osveshcheniya

СНО: Светилник Наружного Освещения

Light exterior illumination (outside light)

Da

Да

Yes

DMV: Dekretom Moskovskoe Vremya

ДМВ: Декретом Московское Время

Decreed/Legal Moscow Time

Do svidaniya

До свидания

Goodbye

DSD: Datchik Signal’nyi Davleniya

ДСД: Датчик Сигнальный Давления

Pressure Alarm Sensor

Elektron

Электрон

Electron

GA: Germetichnyi Adapter

ГА: Герметичный Адаптер

Pressurized Adapter (Zarya)

Gigienicheskie plavki

Гигиенические плавки

Hygienic briefs

Glavnyi

Главный

Main/senior person in charge

Glisser-M

«Глиссер-М»

Speedboat

GStM-1 and –2, Gruzovoi Strela Manipulyator

ГСтМ-1 & -2, Грузовая Стрела Манипулятор

Cargo Crane Manipulator

IMBP: Institut Mediko-Biologicheskikh Problem

ИМБП: Институт Медико-Биологических Проблем

Institute of Medical and Biological Problems

InPU: Integrirovannyi Pul’t Upravleniya

ИнПУ: Интерированный Пульт Управления

Integrated Control Panel

Kayuta

Каюта

Cabin

Korona

«Корона»

Crown

Kriogen

«Криоген»

Cryogenic

KSD: Klapan Stravlivaniya Davleniya

КСД: Клапан Стравливания Давления

Depress valve

KVD: Klapan Vyravnivaniya Davleniya

КВД: Клапан Выравнивания Давления

Pressure equalization valve

KVO: Kostyum Vodyanogo Okhlazhdeniya

КВО: Костюм Водяного Охлаждения

Liquid cooling garment

LP: Litievyi poglotitel’

ЛП: Литиевый поглотитель CO₂

Lithium absorbent (carbon dioxide) canisters

Mir

«Мир»

“World, peace” – Russian space station (1986-2001)

MKS: Mezhdunarodnaya Kosmicheskaya Stantsiya

МКС: Международная Космическая Станция

International Space Station (Cyrillic acronym)

Moskva

Mосква

Moscow

MV: Manovakuummetr

МВ: Мановакууммето

Pressure gauges

Myortvy?

Мëртвы?

Dead?

Nyet

Нет

No

Orlan-M

«Орлан-M», plural Орланы, Orlany

Sea Eagle (Russian spacesuit)

PA: Pul’t Abonenta

ПА: Пульт Абонента

Public Address system/comm panel

PGO-SU

ПГО-СУ

PGPU: Pul’t Gidropnevmoupravleniya CK

ПГПУ: Пульт Гидропневмоуправления СК

Pneumohydraulic control panel (spacesuit)

Pirs

«Пирс»

Pier (Russian Docking Compartment-1)

PkhO: Perekhodnoi Otsek

ПХО: Переходной Отсек

Transfer Compartment (Zvezda)

PkhO-SU

ПХО-СУ

RO: Rabochii Otsek

РО: Рабочий Отсек

Working Compartment (Zvezda)

POV: Pul’t Obespecheniya Vykhoda

ПОВ: Пульт Обеспечения ВЫХОДА

Control panel provision for exit

Privet

Привет

Hi!

Progress

«Прогресс»

Russian cargo/supply spaceship

PSS: Pul’t Signalizatsii Sistem

ПСС: Пульт Сигнализации Систем

Caution & Warning Panels

Regul

«Регул»

Regulate

Regul-Paket

Регул-Пакет

Regulated-package

Russkii

Русский

Russian

SB: Solnechnaya Batareya

СБ: Солнечная Батарея

Solar array

Schastlivo

Счастливо

Good-bye and good luck

Shlemofon

Шлемофон

Communications cap (plural shlemofony, шлемофоны)

Sokol

«Сокол»

Falcon (Russian pressure suit)

Soyuz TMA: Transportnyi Modernizrovannyi Antropometricheskii

«Союз Транспортный Модернизрованный Антропометрический»

Union (Russian spaceship) Transport Modernized Anthropometric (replacing TM version)

SOZH: Sistemy Obespecheniya Zhiznedeyatel’nosti

СОЖ: Системы Обеспечения Жизнедеятельности

Life Support System

Spetsial’naya meditsina

Специнальная медицина

Special medicine

Strela

«Стрела»

Arrow (Russian cargo manipulator arm)

STTS: Sistema Telefonno-Telegrafnoi Svyazi

СТТС: Система Телефонно-Телеграфной Связи

Telephone-Telegraph Signal System

TNG: Tangenta

ТНГ: Тангента

Push-to-talk (button)

Tovarishchi/tovarishch

Товарищи/товарищ

Comrades/comrade

Tranzit

«Транзит»

Transit

TsP: Tsentral’nyi Post

ЦП: Центральный Пост

Service Module central command post

TsPK: Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov imeni Yu. A. Gagarin

ЦПК: Центр Подготовки Космонавтов имэни Ю. А. Гагарина

Yurii Gagarin Cosmonauts’ Training Center

TsUP: Tsentr Upravleniya Poletom

ЦУП: Центр Управления Полётом

Mission/Flight Control Center (Moscow), pronounced tsoop

Tvorog

Творог

Cottage cheese with nuts

Uchastnik polyota

Участник полёта

Flight participant

Ura Rossiya!

Ура Россия!

Hooray for Russia!

VK: Ventilyator Komfortnyi

ВК: Вентилятор Комфортный

Personal fan (ventilator comfort)

VKD: Vnekorabel’naya Deyatel’nost’

ВКД: Внекорабельная Деятельность

Out-of-cabin or out-of-ship activities/work (i.e. EVA)

VL-1 & -2: Vykhod Lyk-2

BЛ-1, ВЛ-2: Выход люк-1

Pirs exit hatch one (of two)

Voskhod

Восход

Sunrise

VU

БУ

Yakor’

«Якорь»

Anchor

Zarya

«Заря» (функционально Грузовой Блок, FGB)

Sunrise (Russian Functional Cargo Block module)

Zvezda

«Звезда» (служебный модуль)

Star (Russian Service Module)

Zvyozdyi Gorodok

Звёздый Городок

Star City (Starry Town) – the Yurii Gagarin Cosmonauts’ Training Center

Cyrillic words:

Сергей Александрович Константинов, Сергей/Серëжа

Sergei Aleksandrovich Konstantinov, Sergei/Seryozha (official/intimate names)

Темир Ержанович Аитматов, Темюша

Temir “Temyusha” Erzhanovich Aitmatov

ТО-ОКТЛ

TO-OKTL

Cut-off

Юрий Леонидович Золотёв, Юрий/Юра

Yurii Leonidovich Zolotyov, Yurii/Yura

Decomposition formula

From “Beyond the grave – understanding human decomposition,” by Arpad A. Vass (published in Microbiology Today, Vol. 28, Nov. 2001):

The formula is y = 1285/x (where y is the number of days it takes to become skeletonized or mummified and x is the average temperature in Centigrade during the decomposition process). The average maintained temperature on the ISS is 23°C, so a dead crewmember’s body would take around 55.8 days or nearly two months to decay.

Autopsy tools

Ed Uthman’s Autopsy Tools page. Also of use was his Autopsy Screenwriter’s Guide.

© Suzanne B. McHale, February 2002-December 2003; revised December 2007