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Shuttle crew simulate space disaster

Space Station

The International Space Station (Pic: NASA)

Astronauts from the space shuttle Discovery have simulated one of the worst accidents that could befall a spacewalker, and taken it in their stride.

According to Reuters, Jeff Wisoff and Michael Lopez-Alegria this week tested a jetpack called SAFER, designed to save an astronaut who becomes untethered and is floating away from the safety of the shuttle or the International Space Station.

"Jeff, what's it like being a human satellite?'' one astronaut called to Wisoff, who was pretending to be stranded in space and floating away from his spacecraft.

"A human Sputnik,'' Wisoff responded. "Pretty awesome.''

It might be the kind of accident that happens in movies all the time, but so far it has never occurred in real space life.

The test took place during the fourth and final spacewalk of Discovery's 11-day mission to the International Space Station.

For most of the shuttle program's 20-year history, if an astronaut had been stranded, the shuttle commander simply could fly the 20-tonne spacecraft into position to retrieve the wanderer.

But more than 150 spacewalks remain to be done while the International Space Station is being built. For all of them the shuttle either will be docked at the station or, when the spacewalk is performed by crews living aboard the station, back in its hanger at the Kennedy Space Station.

Using the SAFER unit, Wisoff and Lopez-Alegria tested whether an astronaut can orient himself well enough to return to the shuttle after floating away.

Astronauts Were Still Tethered

The test did not seem to make either astronaut nervous. For the most part, they made operational notes, joked with one another and took in the view.

It was just a test, after all, and the one pretending to be stranded was always connected to a lengthy tether held by the other, who rode the shuttle's 15 metre robotic arm.

"I certainly feel Mike is my very best friend in the world at this moment,'' Wisoff joked, as Lopez-Alegria tended the safety line.

Each flew some 15-18 metres from the space station straight toward a camera mounted in the shuttle's payload bay, after first testing the systems that would stop a stranded astronaut from tumbling.

Mission Control was hoping to attempt a second test, this one to see if an astronaut can get a dead or stricken astronaut back to the shuttle's airlock without using any tools other than the safety tethers. Unfortunately time constraints meant this test had to be scratched.

Data collected from the SAFER test will go back to the astronaut-training facility in Houston to make the virtual-reality simulators there even more authentic, NASA said.

Unlike in the movies, there was nothing hurried or frantic about the test. It took Wisoff about 30 minutes to finish the first one.

"It's very controlled and very deliberate, and that's how an actual rescue would happen", Daryl Schuck, Mission Control's lead spacewalk officer for this mission, said of the test.

Discovery's mission is the 100th for the US shuttle program and the last before the International Space Station becomes permanently occupied. The Expedition One crew of two Russians and their American commander is set to arrive in early November after launch from a Russian-owned rocket complex in Kazakhstan.

The $60 billion space station is a joint venture by the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada.