Training for EUROMIR Missions

Astronaut training

The astronauts and cosmonauts on board Mir have two prime functions:

• They operate systems and perform experiments which cannot be done automatically or remotely, or are done more efficiently by humans.
• They themselves serve as the 'test subjects' for many experiments.

An advantage of having science experiments conducted manually in space is that the crew members are able to use their initiative and resourcefulness in understanding and correcting problems, interpreting new requests from scientists on the ground, and taking advantage of unexpected or fortuitous situations.

Four ESA astronauts were chosen for the two EUROMIR missions, each mission having one ESA-designated astronaut (for crew 1) and one stand-by astronaut (for crew 2). Thomas Reiter was crew 1 for EUROMIR 95. All the astronauts began training preparations in early 1993 at ESA's European Astronauts' Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany, with introductory courses on Russian space operations and safety issues, and intensive instruction in the Russian language - as future training and mission operations would be conducted in Russian.

Formal mission training began in August 1993 at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (TsPK) at 'Star City' near Moscow. In the first phase, all four ESA astronauts went through basic training together. This included crew training in general technical and biomedical subjects, and in Soyuz and Mir systems on Soyuz-TM and Mir simulators and trainers. The astronauts also gained experience in working under conditions of microgravity during training sessions on a Russian Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft (the 'Flying Laboratory') performing parabolic flights.

Upon completion of basic training in May 1994, the crews of each EUROMIR mission began their separate mission-specific training in conducting experimental ground and flight programmes. This included obtaining physiological and medical data on the astronauts in the Baseline Data Collection (BDC) programme. Additionally, experimental data were collected on training hardware during experiment training sessions; these data will be used as ground comparisons with that from the in-flight experiments.

Spacewalk: a first for ESA

EUROMIR 95 was like no previous manned European space mission. The mission's training programme was necessarily extensive and intense, due to the new challenges of EUROMIR 95:

• a mission duration of 135 days;
• about 40 experiments to perform, with new hardware;
• added responsibilities for Mir Space Station systems and engineering operations;
• a spacewalk.

EUROMIR 95 marked the first extravehicular activity (EVA) by any ESA astronaut. In preparation for the planned five-hour spacewalk, the object of which was to secure a European space exposure experiments package to the exterior of the Mir station, the two ESA astronauts participated in one of the most challenging parts of the programme: full EVA training. Courses in space suit systems and maintenance were followed by many hours of simulations using specially modified space suits in the Neutral Buoyancy Facility ('Hydrolaboratory'). This facility at Star City, a large deep-water tank (23 metres in diameter, 12 metres deep, and holding 5,000 cubic metres of water, containing mock-ups of the Mir station and modules) permits cosmonauts and ESA astronauts to practice EVA manoeuvres and procedures in a simulated weightless environment. Additional practice with actual space suits in a vacuum chamber enabled the astronauts to experience suit movement and joint mobility in a simulated space environment.

This mission also marked the first time that a visiting astronaut would have the responsibility of operating and maintaining Mir Space Station systems. As the flight engineer for EUROMIR 95, the ESA astronaut was expected to spend about two hours per day performing on-board engineering tasks such as operating the critical life-support systems which keep the station habitable. The ESA astronauts trained on a number of dedicated systems, and studied engineering procedures, in preparation for joining the on-board crew.

The longer mission duration, and availability of increased resources for EUROMIR 95, meant that more experiments could be performed than had been planned for EUROMIR 94, a previous mission by a European astronaut to Mir. Most of the scientific equipment for EUROMIR 95 was not completed until just before the launch, so it was decided to minimise travel time and transport costs for the scientists and their hardware by undertaking much of the experiment training at EAC in Germany. These training sessions served several important aims:

• They provided a forum for discussing the scientific basis of experiments between the astronauts and the experiments' principal investigators.
• They enabled the astronauts to familiarise themselves with experiment hardware.
• They permitted the collection of experiment 'baseline' data, which would allow the scientists to compare the ground-based results with those obtained later in space.