The tech behind Europe's astronaut training

European Space Agency


How do Europe's astronauts practise extravehicular activity? By visiting a swimming pool in Cologne

Before lift-off, splashdown. In a ten-metre-deep pool in the European Space Agency's (ESA) Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, six trainee astronauts carry out "extravehicular-activity familiarisation" underwater.

"The neutral buoyancy is about the closest thing we can get on Earth to simulating spacewalk conditions," says Tim Peake, one of the trainees and the UK's first official astronaut. (Of the four Britons who have made it into space, one paid to be a cosmonaut on a Russian mission and the other three took US citizenship to fly with Nasa.) "A lot of people think it's a very graceful experience. It's not." Bulky gloves deny dexterity; the life-support system hinders movement in confined spaces; and the helmet limits visibility. Astronauts get used to all three by practising underwater in replica spacesuits.

The training began in June 2009, with simple tasks such as exiting an airlock and tethering oneself to the station's exterior. They've since mastered more complex missions, working in pairs with real space tools to replace multiple payloads on a full-scale Columbus module (the European lab on the International Space Station) in four-hour excursions. As well as the routine -- the trainees must put their visors up or down every 90 minutes, to simulate the space station's frequent alternation between sunlight and darkness -- emergency scenarios are thrown in, such as depressurisation. "One of you will suddenly 'lose consciousness'," says 38-year old Peake." You've got about 20 minutes to get them back to the airlock safely."

The training culminates in an eight-hour exam ("like a nightmare driving test") in Nasa's neutral-buoyancy lab at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Spacewalk licences permitting, the first of ESA's astronauts will blast off in 2013.


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