Well, it’s all behind us now. The spacewalk is done. Total time in open space: 2 hours 38 minutes, instead of the planned 1 hour 50 minutes. We opened the hatch at 5:34 AM, closed it at 8:12 AM. I’ll continue my notes. After waking at 10 PM, we had breakfast, completed the medical check — my blood pressure was 106/86, pulse 100. That’s the result of not sleeping all night, or more precisely, not sleeping during the entire allotted rest period. Then we established orientation, uncaged the gyroscopes, ran programmed attitude maneuvers for the station, and switched to stabilization mode using the strapdown system KASKAD — at which point the station became motionless relative to the stars. We put on our undergarments for wearing beneath the spacesuits. After that, we prepared the transport ship in case we needed to make an emergency evacuation of the station. We powered it up and activated all communication systems. We mothballed the station, partially closed the hatch separating the ship from the station, and sealed the hatch between the transfer compartment and the work compartment. Now the transfer compartment would serve as our airlock for exiting into open space and returning to the station. We began putting on the spacesuits. The ground asked us to be suited up by 3:50 AM. We entered the VHF communication zone and reported that we were suited up and proceeding with spacesuit leak checks and depressurization of the transfer compartment. The ground gave us the go-ahead.

We left the communication zone and reentered it with pressure in the transfer compartment already down to 9 mmHg. The ground cleared us to switch from the station’s onboard life-support feed to the spacesuit’s autonomous systems. This is no simple task. You have to disconnect the onboard umbilical — with hoses for oxygen supply and cooling from the station’s systems — and reconnect to the EVA umbilical, which activates those systems within the suit itself. To do this, in a pressurized suit at 0.4 atm overpressure, you have to lie horizontally under the handrails and reach the EVA connector, then stow the station connector in its place. After that, you can open the exit hatch. I turned the handle of the worm-gear lock, and immediately a sliver of brilliant white sunlight appeared. At that moment, according to the ground, my pulse was 140, then 120… 132… and 108 by the end of the communication session. Breathing rate 24, temperature for both of us 37.1 degrees.

I opened the hatch. The Sun was ahead and to the right, and although the lighting in the transfer compartment was good, it was still as if you’d opened the door of a cottage on a sunny, frosty day, and a flood of bright light poured into the house.

Tiny glittering specks of dust flew out of the station. Space, like a giant vacuum cleaner, began sucking everything out. Along with the dust, little washers and nuts that had been lost somewhere in the hull paneling went flying out; a pencil drifted past. We installed protection on the exit hatch cover, since instruments “Komplast” and “Elast” are mounted on its exterior, so we wouldn’t snag them with our spacesuits during work. I climbed out through the hatch up to my waist. There was no fear or anxiety at all — apparently, after such long preparation, nothing could surprise me anymore. I saw the Earth — enormous Earth — and couldn’t believe what was happening was real, that I’d opened the door into space. I installed the TV camera spotlight. At first it was hard to orient myself along the station’s planes, so I started by looking around near the hatch and along the station. I spotted the solar panels, antennas, instruments, and identified my position relative to them. Then I mentally pictured the orientation of the station’s planes, and after that I could navigate the layout of structures and equipment. In the future, the circular handrails should be color-coded by station plane — that would make orientation much easier. Next came work with “Etalon.” It wasn’t as simple as it had seemed in training, but the fact that before launch I’d personally felt everything, tried everything with my own hands — that paid off a hundredfold here.

The spotlight’s electrical connector, which I had insisted on replacing with a new one, I mated in literally a dozen seconds, almost effortlessly. The TV camera boom slid easily into its mounting socket. The main thing when working is not to get nervous — and you don’t get nervous when you know what you’re doing. “Etalon” is a set of plates with various optical coatings arranged in a checkerboard pattern.

In square A1, the coating was clean white; in B1, the brown coating had peeled off diagonally about halfway; in square B5, there was a spot like a solar melt mark; in V5, about two-thirds of the coating had come off; in square V2, the coating was warped and had a mustard color — maybe it was always like that — and in B2 there were many small blisters, as if the surface had heated up and outgassed. In the remaining squares, the coatings were intact.

After replacing the “Etalons,” I opened the “Yakor” — a foot restraint platform on the station’s exterior. The latch pulled freely, and “Yakor” swung smoothly into its working position. After that, I fully exited the station through the hatch and floated gently above the platform — no difficulties. My feet were somewhat loose inside the spacesuit, so I couldn’t feel the soles well, but by pulling myself down on the handrail, I pressed myself to the “Yakor” platform and locked my feet into its clamps. Here’s how it works: you first set your feet on the platform under the restraint bar in a toes-together, heels-apart position, then you bring the heels together and spread the toes apart. This way the toes are held under the bar, and the spurs on the boot heels engage the slots in the platform. By this point, communication was ending — we were leaving the ground stations’ line of sight. The ground confirmed everything was nominal and gave us the go-ahead to continue working.

I checked my watch. Twenty minutes until shadow entry. We took the film camera and began filming ourselves, the station, and the Earth. There was one difficulty — you have to find the start button by feel through the gloves. While the camera runs, you can “hear” it clicking through vibration transmitted by its thermal cover and through the gloves. After that, we took the thermal box with the still camera and photographed the station.

Space is extraordinarily beautiful. The dark velvet of the sky, the blue halo of the Earth, and the rapidly passing lakes, rivers, fields, masses of clouds. All around, a soundless silence. No sensation of speed. No wind whistling in your ears, nothing pressing against you. This panorama is very calm and majestic. The motionless orbital complex, like an enormous cliff, stands frozen in space against the stunningly beautiful backdrop of the rotating Earth. Strangely, there was a sense of losing touch with the reality of the world around me, as if I were witnessing a magnificent set piece created by someone. Standing on the platform, I thought: for these minutes, you can endure anything on Earth and in space. At that moment, the Sun was behind me, and the station’s hull was brightly illuminated by brilliant white light, as if by powerful floodlights.

You can look without a light filter the same way you’d look around on a southern beach on a hot summer day without sunglasses — but there, sunglasses are better, and for us, the light filter. With it, the lighting is even, pleasant in color and brightness, without glare, with a slightly smoky-brownish tone. When we were passing over Kazakhstan, Alexei Leonov came on the comm and asked me: “Valentin, after you look at the clouds, do you get yellow spots in your eyes?” I said I didn’t have that sensation. “And what can you see on Earth right now?” I see, I said, our hotel in Baikonur and the instructors sunbathing by the pool. Everyone laughed. The ground asked us to show the Earth’s horizon and the transport ship. After that, they asked again: what do you see on the Earth?

Tolya says: “Lake Balkhash.” I saw it too. At first it was behind me, then it floated into view in front of me and sprawled like an enormous sausage across the curvature of the Earth. The thing is, you feel the curvature of the Earth in open space much more strongly than through the station’s porthole. And everything you see on the Earth — seas, rivers, mountains, islands — you perceive as if on a huge rotating globe, and there’s a noticeable distortion of observed objects that grows the closer they are to the horizon.

The silence is striking. The station doesn’t budge. The eye detects not the slightest motion on its surface. There’s not even a sensation of vibration, even though inside the orbital complex hundreds of instruments and dozens of fans are running, and coolant is being pumped through the pipelines. Everything is static.

To my right, covered in the black fabric of its vacuum-screen thermal insulation, is our transport ship Soyuz T-5, its propulsion module jutting into the blackness of the Universe. And to the left — toward the Progress ship — two enormous solar array panels greedily catch the light, sparkling with the mosaic of their photovoltaic cells, black as anthracite with a dark blue tinge shading to azure. The green thermal insulation fabric on the station’s surface has faded to grayish, but lies undamaged. On the work compartment, in the narrow-diameter section near the base of the solar panel, I can see two “Yakor” platforms in their stowed position, and on the panel itself, the mounting assembly and cable mechanism for installing additional solar array sections to boost the station’s power capacity. That work will be done by our comrades on the next expedition; our task is to assess the feasibility of performing it. We’ll ask management to authorize a repeat EVA for us to practice the methodology of extending the solar arrays, so that upon returning to Earth we can give our comrades concrete recommendations on access routes, restraint positions, necessary tools, and refine the time estimates for this work.

We entered shadow. At this point the Moon was behind us, and its light was insufficient. I asked Tolya to turn on the spotlight, after which the instruments and devices on the compartment’s surface that we needed to work with became clearly visible. In shadow, by spotlight, we performed the replacement of instruments mounted on the station’s hull: a micrometeorite panel with a set of various materials — plastic, ceramic, rubber, and others; the “Meduza” panel with test tubes filled with various biopolymers; and “Elast” — a package of thermal insulation fabrics. I worked with the “Istok” panel, which has several rows of bolted connections requiring different torque levels for loosening and tightening the bolts with a special wrench. The wrench isn’t entirely convenient to use, since you constantly have to move your right hand to the latch to lock the bolt head in the wrench socket or release it — so the handles should have two latches: one for locking, another for unlocking. In general, this kind of assembly work can be done, but even at maximum wrench force on the third row of bolts — which corresponds to 1.7 kgf-m — it’s hard going. During this work, the muscles in your arms from wrist to elbow tire quickly, because the metal rings on the suit sleeves, where the gloves attach hermetically, chafe your wrists.

A bit about the spacesuit. It’s a semi-rigid type. It has a rigid section, like the cuirass of a suit of armor, and a soft section — the sleeves and leggings. The suit is designed so that you don’t put it on but rather step into it, like a wardrobe, and close the door behind you. The helmet is built as one piece with the rigid section, while the soft parts consist of several layers: a pressure-tight layer, a structural layer, and a protective layer that shields the suit from damage. The suit can sustain life for over 6 hours, which means it has to provide a good atmosphere, cooling, and ventilation. All the hardware is grouped in the back door, called the “ranets” (backpack). There you’ll find the oxygen supply — we breathe that — a CO2 scrubber, pumps, automation instruments, and water reserves. But the water in this case isn’t for drinking; it’s for carrying away heat. Mobility in the suit is adequate, though it all depends on what operations you need to perform. If you need to remove something, install something, or move from one work zone to another, that’s quite doable.

During extended, continuous work, you sweat, and sometimes moisture forms on the helmet visor, making it hard to see the cooling adjustment knob. With the cooling regulator at position 3-4, your feet get very cold — your knees actually ache — but for the torso, it’s comfortable, no stuffiness. When sweat broke out, I switched on the auxiliary fan. Overall, there were no major difficulties working in the suit; you just have to remember to monitor your pace and rhythm.

We enter the next communication session. It’s still dark out for us. We wait for sunrise. The whole feeling is like being in the countryside. The station’s hatch glows like the slightly ajar door of a house. The spotlight shines like a street lamp on a pole, faintly illuminating the station’s hull. All around, the dense, solid blackness of the cosmic night. We came into the light — Sun behind us — and I can feel through my gloves the heating of the handrails, even though they’re coated in white enamel. The sensation of hot sand, but without the burn; the outer surface of the gloves is warm too. We entered the communication zone, and I began a television report about our work outside the station, describing what instruments are installed there and showing them with commentary. Then Tolya passed me the TV camera, and I filmed him in the station’s hatch, framed against the Earth.

Everyone says it turned out well. Despite the early morning, management came to Mission Control to watch us work. After going out of the comm zone, we decided to install the additional equipment as well: “Resurs” — a set of metal samples under mechanical load, in tension and compression, to assess their aging in space conditions; “TMS” — thermomechanical joints; and “Komplast” — a set of non-composite materials. We got it all done, though it cost us another hour of work in open space. Even though we’d gone over the work schedule, we felt calm. We had fully completed the program of experiments in open space. Before entering the hatch, when I released my feet and floated up above the platform, I looked down — at that moment we were flying over the Atlantic — and when the station’s hull passed out of my field of view, I saw the blue abyss of the ocean. A sensation of falling into a boundless chasm of blue space came over me. It took my breath away. Now that, I’ll tell you, was actually frightening.

I could compare this sensation to the free fall of a parachutist, when he internally gauges his altitude and relative speed against the landing spot. But here, the sensation of falling is: always beyond the horizon.

In general, moving away from the station isn’t so simple, and when the need arises, it will require special preparation and training. Slowly, without problems, we entered the station’s hatch, and before closing it — this was already in shadow — I sat down one last time on the rim of the hatch, as if on a doorstep, and admired the starry sky. Now this is truly the Universe, with myriads of stars on the black velvet of space, where the stars of the Southern Cross, Alpha and Beta Centauri, stood out brilliantly — and below, in the moonlight, gray avalanches of cloud swept past like fog, with dark chasms of the Earth between them. We closed the hatch. Looked at our watches: 8:12 AM Moscow time.

We pressurized the transfer compartment, first to 270 mmHg. We checked the station’s seal, and having confirmed there was no pressure drop and the hatch was airtight, we pressurized to 600 mm and exited the spacesuits. The first thing we noticed was the smell that hung in the transfer compartment — like a room that had been heavily irradiated with a quartz lamp. It came from the suit shells, scorched by the Sun’s rays. We equalized pressure with the work compartment. Station pressure reached 706 mmHg, and then after equalizing with the transport ship, 713 mmHg. We entered the communication session and, without changing — on the spot, still in our liquid cooling garments — gave a live television report of our impressions from working in open space.

I said that what surprised and impressed me most was the sheer enormity of the technical complex Soyuz T-5 — Salyut-7 — Progress. Gagarin’s flight proved that humans can fly into space. We, today’s cosmonauts, flying into space, are already learning to live and work in it for extended periods. And that is unthinkable without work in open space, because space is like a field on Earth that yields bread — but the bread of space, we don’t yet know what it will be for humanity, because first you have to study that field, create the tools, plow it, sow it, and only then will it truly bear fruit as necessary for people as bread.

While in open space, I launched a mini-satellite in the form of a capsule. Jean-Loup Chretien asked me to do it, and he’d been asked by friends in Moscow — embassy and trade mission staff. The capsule contained their autographs; apparently they wanted to leave their mark in space, even if only this way. A bit about the “Meduza” experiment. As I mentioned, it’s a panel with a set of test tubes containing various biopolymers. The experiment studies the evolution of the primary building material of cells — protein, which is constructed from biopolymers. The task of the experiment is to understand how, under what conditions, and from what materials the origin of origins of life on Earth arose — the first living cell. Geneticists and biologists have already studied the building material of cells quite well, but how and at what stage of evolution, under what environmental conditions, something breathed life into it to make it a living cell — that remains a mystery, and again a mystery. A similar experiment had already been conducted on Salyut-6, and at that time, from simple biopolymer molecules, molecules of more complex structure were obtained. A synthesis of nucleotides occurred, forming a substance of higher molecular weight. And now we’ve brought them out into space again, to see where the process will go next in the development of these molecules. This is extremely interesting.