Page 54 - Life beyond the Karman

Spacewalk (extravehicular activity)
Astronauts aboard the ISS spend most of their time in the relatively safe environment of the orbiting spacecraft. However, occasionally, they face the deadly rapture of space for hours, with only the thin protection of their spacesuits between them and the frigid vacuum. These jaunts are known as spacewalks.
The official term for the spacewalk event is “extravehicular activity,” or EVA. There are many different reasons to perform an EVA, such as repairing the spacecraft, installing new pieces of equipment or deploying scientific experiments.
Spacewalks were indispensable for the space station’s assembly, and over two decades later, they remain a crucial component for the enormous spacecraft’s continued maintenance in low Earth orbit.
Space Research and Technology Facilities
It is crucial to coordinate the ISS’s research to manage the international laboratory’s scientific assets, as well as the time and space required to accommodate experiments and programmes from a host of private, commercial, industry and government agencies in different countries.
Teams of controllers and scientists on the ground continuously plan, monitor and remotely operate experiments from control centres around the globe. Controllers staff payload operations centres around the world, providing for researchers and the station crew.
State-of-the-art computers and communications equipment deliver up-to-the-minute reports about experiment facilities and investigations between science outposts across the US. The payload operations team also synchronises the payload time lines among the international partners, ensuring the best use of valuable resources and crew time.
Mission Control Centre
A Mission Control Centre (MCC) is a facility from which personnel operate the remote resources needed to conduct a mission. Mission control has the major task of getting satellites or astronauts into space and home again. It must control operations to ensure that the assignment is carried out carefully and that the mission achieves its objectives and targets.
Each control centre operates a little differently. Each person in the team working in the MCC is a certified flight controller for a particular discipline (e.g., electrical power, thermal control, trajectory, planning, etc.) They are well trained and thoroughly evaluated in simulations to qualify to be in an MCC.
The ISS is monitored around the clock. Those watching over it are based in a flight control room where they track the station, monitor its health and that of its crew, oversee operations and provide backup when problems arise.
The ISS is an extremely complicated and large vehicle; therefore, commanding is carefully controlled. It has flight controllers who are command certified and send commands to
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LIFE BEYOND THE KÁRMÁN LINE - OUTER SPACE