EVA training day. Got up, went on the air, talked, and began preparing the gear. We put on the full under-suit kit: underwear, medical belts, water-cooling garments, behind-the-ear temperature sensors, headsets. I started entering the spacesuit — and it’s going with difficulty, not at all like on Earth. It feels as though my shoulders have widened and my head won’t fit. The thing is, up here I don’t step into the suit as on the ground — I float in lying down, and the absence of body weight doesn’t help but actually hinders entry, since gravity doesn’t pull you down into it, and to get your legs in you have to push off the backpack frame with your hands. I squeezed in with grunting and grumbling, released the suit’s locking fixture, floated up, turned around, and stood as if on Earth.

Of course, the sensation in the suit here is easier than in simulated weightlessness during flights in the IL-76 airplane or at the bottom of the hydro pool. There’s no water resistance as in the pool, nor the transition from weightlessness to g-loads as in the airplane, where weightlessness lasts about 20 seconds and then, when the plane levels off, the suit’s weight of about 70 kg multiplied by 2-2.5 g presses down on you and you have to hold it on your legs. Then Tolya entered his suit and also stood up.

During the comm session we began checking spacesuit airtightness, pressurized to 0.12 atmospheres, and just as during ground training, suddenly an off-nominal situation — the pressure in the suit drops 4 divisions on the gauge in 30 seconds, and that level of leak is unacceptable.

We repeated the check — same thing. The ground suggested opening the suit. We did: it turned out a strap from the water-cooling garment had gotten caught in the backpack hatch. That’s the result of poor mutual checking during backpack closure. We repeated the airtightness check — everything normal. After that we tried out the most comfortable placement for documentation, practiced reaching the instrument panel and the equipment attachment points, and rehearsed the action sequence. When you stand in the suit connected to the onboard umbilical, it restricts your movement because of the heavy bundle of hoses linking you to the station’s life-support system, but after disconnecting and switching to the suit’s autonomous mode, turning becomes easier since you’re no longer tethered to the station. We took care with our heads, to avoid damaging the helmets. All around are fan housings, brackets, bolts, and angle pieces — easy to bump into. After training we inspected the helmets — all clean. We tested the pressure housing with the camera and the movie camera, which we also decided to bring. In short, the training went well. The second half of the day we spent drying the spacesuits, replacing oxygen bottles, CO2 absorbers, and so on. As luck would have it, things you need right now tend to float away, then resurface a week or a month later unexpectedly — like today the PSN wrench and the camera handle turned up, but the focus ring was never found, so we had to make one ourselves. We held a contest: whoever’s turned out better would get installed. Tolya won. I should say that the law of successful onboard work is thorough checking of equipment, gear, and documentation before every planned task, and for the most critical parts, an independent dry run of the entire action sequence.