Ioonos

Long preparations

IOONOS: How long does an astronaut need to prepare for a mission?
Jean-François Clervoy: For a short mission you need to prepare for at least a year, and for a long mission in the Station it’s two years of preparations. Full time! You live the mission in a simulator before doing it for real. The work is very intense, you have to be able to handle breakdowns, not to get stressed and not to panic…

IOONOS: What specific preparations have to be made?
Jean-François Clervoy: In the shuttle* there are over a thousand switches. The first time you go into the cockpit you say to yourself, “I’ll never manage”, and then you learn. Space is an excellent example of what man is capable of and his incredible capacity to adapt!
In the simulator you learn to live completely like up there. The 1,000 switches work and we train on all the critical phases of the flight and the mission. Everything is simulated. You can even see the Earth, in a virtual image, through the visor.

IOONOS: Do you really live in the simulator?
Jean-François Clervoy: For a short mission you prepare with the rest of the crew and you actually live together in the simulator, under the exact conditions you will have up there. Of course you can go out to make a call or go to the toilet, even though it’s no bad thing to get used to the space toilets in the simulator! You eat the space food in the little kitchenette corner, and you take turns to prepare the meals according to the menus that have been posted up.

IOONOS: What are the flight plan and procedures for?
Jean-François Clervoy: You take off with about 100 kg of written documents! For short missions of less than 2 weeks, everything is detailed.
For example, if I were to show you the flight plan for the Hubble* mission that I did, you would see that my timetable was very exact. For each day the activities are detailed to within 5 minutes, for each member of the crew.
For example, still on that mission, the flight plan stated that exactly two and a half hours after lift off, I had to follow a procedure to operate an instrument to measure radiation. So I had a procedures book for what steps to follow.

Stand by for departure

IOONOS: When are you ready to leave?
Jean-François Clervoy: An astronaut is ready to leave when his instructor announces he is ready. He himself feels ready to lift off when he has reviewed all the stages of the mission, and that for each stage he has read all the books in question and understood them. You will not have done everything in the simulator, but you will have experienced each task.

IOONOS: What do you feel on lift off?
Jean-François Clervoy: An enormous amount of energy needs to be expended in very little time to reach orbit and a speed of 28,000 km/h. That’s 10 times faster than the fastest bullet that exists! Imagine crossing Paris in less than a second.
So you feel the acceleration and the thrust on your back, a bit like Space Mountain at Disneyland. It gets up to 3G, that’s to say you feel 3 times your weight at the end of the rise. But what you especially feel is the sense of wonder, it’s fantastic, space is black in daytime and the Earth is blue and magnificent. You can make out the countries, volcanoes, hurricanes… As for Weightlessness" >weightlessness, it’s very funny, it’s like a game!

IOONOS: What are your impressions of life on board?
Jean-François Clervoy: I compare life on board to camping with friends. Everyone has his little tricks to make life easier. And so, since we all lived together in the simulator, we got on easily. On short missions, it’s as though you take your tent down every morning because there is no bunk. You wash with a flannel and eat ready-made meals, freeze dried or in sauce so that they don’t go all over the place because of the Weightlessness" >weightlessness. Even sweets are in special bags so that we can take them out without them flying away. And as for the toilets, it’s just like camping except that you aren’t allowed to dig a hole behind the tent, and there too you must follow procedures!

IOONOS: Who is in charge on board?
Jean-François Clervoy: The Number One authority during the flight isn’t the captain, nor of course the machine, but the flight director who is down below. When there is no communication with the ground, the captain takes over. Of course, things never happen like they were expected to. There’s always something that takes a bit longer. A software programme that doesn’t behave exactly as expected. Our books and documents have to protect us against every combination of possible breakdowns. But, beyond that, you must use common sense. As soon as anything out of the ordinary occurs, an astronaut must know his craft and in particular know the consequences of each of his actions. On Hubble* for example, it was very easy to damage it permanently. That’s why we have procedures, because you can’t learn everything by heart. But an astronaut has to be able to read between the lines and not always follow to the letter. 

Three voyages into space, three different missions

IOONOS: Can you tell us in a few words about your various missions?
Jean-François Clervoy: My three missions had different objectives; one was for the planet Earth, one for the men of the Mir" >MIR space station, and one for science using the Hubble telescope.

The first one, STS-66 (Space Transportation System), was to study of the atmosphere and the Sun. The results provided a better understanding of the phenomena of holes in the ozone layer and global warming. The sharp inclination of the orbit (57 degrees), the “back” direction of the shuttle in flight almost all the time and the phasing of the orbit to the Sun provided me the best possible conditions for observing Earth. When awake I covered each day the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and all of Asia under superb sunny conditions without a trace of a cloud. This combination of favourable factors for observing the surface of our planet is very rare on a short space flight. The human eye has been proved to be a remarkable optical instrument with performance often superior to the abilities of classic photographic equipment. Especially the ability to detect details through light contrasts. It’s as clear on a small scale with a tanker that is leaking unlawfully on the high seas, and on the larger scale of noting the tectonic movements of the Earth’s surface.

The second mission, STS-84, had as it main objective servicing the Russian, Mir" >MIR space station. We brought experiments and provisions for an American member of our crew who was going to stay 4 months onboard, and we brought back to Earth the one who had been up there. We had developed close relations with the Mir" >MIR crew during joint training in Russia and we felt responsible for what happened to them. The success of their mission depended directly on our arrival. Amongst other things we brought them a urine-based oxygen generator that avoided the consumption of the few disposable, chemical cartridges available on board. We knew they were waiting impatiently after three months living alone without a visit. Opening the connection lock-chamber between the shuttle and the station, the international meal on board Mir" >MIR, and separating the two craft at the end of the mission all remain very emotional moments.

The third mission, STS-103, was to repair and improve the Hubble space telescope (HST). Two months before lift off it had become unusable due to the failure of a gyroscope aboard the satellite. On our shoulders were the careers of several hundred scientists who lived only for the data transmitted by the telescope, still unequalled today for the images of the universe in the farthest reaches of the visible. Hubble’s orbit is also unique for its altitude, the highest ever achieved by the shuttle. I could contemplate our planet from 600 km up, twice as far as the other space flights. The spectacular results of our rescue mission gave me a profound sense of having served Science. I will be pleased to tell my grandchildren, “I was there!” and hope I will be able to transmit to them the taste for adventure.