The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station (2021) - full transcript

[Ronald Reagan]

…advances in science and technology.

Opportunities and jobs will multiply

as we cross new thresholds of knowledge

and reach deeper into the unknown.

Nowhere is this more important

than our next frontier, space.

Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop

a permanently manned space station,

and to do it within a decade.

[applause]

[girl] Hi, Dad. Have you gotten

your Christmas presents yet?

[man] Yeah, thank you for the T-shirt.

[girl] I think I put, like,

a bell in there

that was like, "Number One Dad."

- Got the bell and the card too, yeah.

- [girl] Yeah.

[man] The T-shirt was in there too.

[girl] Yeah.

- [man] Love you, Charlotte.

- [girl] Love you too.

[applause]

Mr. Secretary General,

delegates to the United Nations,

ladies and gentlemen,

we meet again in the quest for peace.

[man] President Kennedy made a speech

to the United Nations in September of 1963

and made the offer

to bring the Soviet Union in

and to make them

a part of the Apollo program.

[JF Kennedy] Finally, in a field

where the United States

and the Soviet Union

have a special capacity

in the field of space,

there is room for new cooperation,

for further joint efforts

in the regulation

and exploration of space.

I include among these possibilities

a joint expedition to the Moon.

Space offers no problems of sovereignty.

Why, therefore,

should man's first flight to the Moon

be a matter of national competition?

November of that year,

he wrote a memo to NASA

telling them he would like to have them

come back in two weeks

and tell them why the Soviet Union

should not be a part of Apollo.

President Kennedy was killed

on the 22nd of November,

and that never happened.

That vision that Kennedy had

of working together as partners

finally materialized

and is happening today.

That is the space station

we're flying right now.

[man] There has never been any other

collaborative engineering project

of this scope, size or challenge,

in my opinion.

You are basically taking

pieces of hardware

that may have been built

thousands of miles apart,

that had never been in the same room,

never touched each other.

Then you have to put them together

in space, in a vacuum,

going at 18,000 miles an hour,

and they have to work

the first time they touch

and not cause shocks or not leak

or have any other problems

that of course are disastrous in space.

And they all worked. They all worked

when we put them together.

I flew three times in space.

My third mission was as the commander

of the International Space Station

early in its assembly in life.

I was trained

for several possible spacewalks.

I ended up doing one

where we were attaching the cables

to power up a new compartment

that had come up

and test out a new piece of equipment

that the Russians had sent up there.

It's an all-day affair

to get ready for it.

You have to have all the right equipment,

we have to prepare the station

as if we can't get back inside

and have to come in a different way,

and then you've got to go through

all the procedures

to make sure your suit is working right

before you go outside.

It's a whole different experience

being on the outside of the station.

We're here in Washington

and the Washington Monument's downtown.

If you could imagine someone asks you

to go out the windows at the top

of the monument and wash the outside.

You open the window, you look out.

There's nothing for 500 feet below you.

So you open the hatch on the station.

You look out.

There's nothing except the atmosphere

for 250 miles below you.

You'd be very careful about making sure

your tethers were always attached,

because the Russian suit did not have

a little rocket pack on the back

to fly you back if you got loose.

About an hour or so in,

when I was feeling pretty comfortable,

I found myself on top of the station,

and so I put my feet under the hand-holds

and I stood up on top of the station.

Imagine standing on top of a 747

and holding on to just a little rope.

That's what it was like standing up there,

because you had the fuselage

of the station,

you had the wings of the solar arrays,

and you're on top of the world,

and it's all just unrolling beneath you.

[applause]

Throughout all history, humankind

has had only one place to call home,

our planet Earth.

Beginning this year, 1998,

men and women from 16 countries

will build a foothold in the heavens,

the International Space Station.

With its vast expanses, scientists

and engineers will actually set sail

on an uncharted sea of limitless mystery

and unlimited potential.

[applause]

[man] The space station is really like

being on a ship, sailing some sea.

We've drawn a lot of legacy

that we all have as seafaring nations.

What the space station provides

is our chance to become

a spacefaring civilization.

My name is Bill Shepherd, and I was

the commander of Expedition 1,

the first crew on the space station

that came aboard in November of 2001.

When I was a young boy,

the space program was starting

and everybody wanted to be an astronaut.

I didn't really have

a good prospect of that

until I was through college

and in the navy,

and a chance came up to apply

for the space shuttle program,

and that's how I got to NASA.

When I was little, I used to cut up

two-by-fours and make little boats.

I'm still in the boat-building business.

It's just in orbit.

I don't really know why I was chosen

to be the commander

for the first expedition.

In my time in the navy

I worked with many foreign counterparts

and there was a great amount

of common sense

and a little bit of kind of

backyard diplomacy required for that.

I don't know if that was why I got picked,

but that helped me a great deal.

There was a lot of controversy

when I was named

to be the leader of the first crew.

I had two exceptional Russian cosmonauts

as crewmates,

but many

of the political leadership in Russia

were quite unhappy

that, from their standpoint,

the Americans had taken over

their space program.

[man in Russian] When I was really young,

my dreams were more down-to-earth.

However, they were always

about technology.

I liked machinery.

Big, complicated machinery.

As I headed

towards my high-school graduation,

I read quite a lot of quality sci-fi

and thought it would be great

to work in the space industry

if I were lucky.

["Beautiful Hell" playing]

♪ I wonder how a gap can feel this much ♪

♪ How a gap can feel

Like something this big ♪

♪ How it multiplies in my veins ♪

♪ And in my blood and home ♪

♪ And trigger itself in my thoughts ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ I wonder how a gap can feel this much ♪

♪ How a gap can feel

Like something this big ♪

♪ How it multiplies in my veins ♪

♪ And in my blood and home ♪

♪ And trigger itself in my thoughts ♪

[in Russian] Like all boys,

we'd look up into the sky,

we'd read books,

including the ones about space travel.

I was old enough by that moment to realize

that the odds of me

becoming a cosmonaut weren't that high.

My name is Sergei Krikalev.

I'm a cosmonaut.

The first crew started to come together,

and as I had experience of working

on both Mir and the shuttle,

I was selected for that first crew.

At first, Bill Shepherd and I

were the only ones there.

Shortly afterwards,

Yuri Gidzenko was added to our crew.

So that was the crew,

Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko, and myself.

We trained for nearly four years

for that first long-term mission.

My name is Ginger Kerrick.

I am currently a division chief

in the Flight Integration Division

at NASA Johnson Space Center.

In the summer of '95,

I took my application

and marched it down to the astronaut

selection office, turned it in.

They had received over 3,000 applicants

and had selected 120 to interview,

and I was one of the 120.

I was 26 years old, and I thought,

"Oh, my gosh, my dream has come true."

But when we went through interview week,

they did medical tests

and they found that I had kidney stones,

and there was a new medical

disqualification enacted that year

that if your body shows the ability

to form a single stone,

it is a lifetime disqualification

from consideration.

So I was devastated,

but I had started this new job

where I got to teach astronauts

in the Mission Operations Directorate,

and I thought,

well, maybe astronaut wasn't for me.

Maybe there's another path

that I was destined to take.

Maybe I'm 26 years old,

and I don't have everything figured out,

so how about I be open-minded

and see where this leads?

Do you wanna go through these procedures

or do you want a general tour?

- General tour would be excellent.

- Okay, let's start up here.

[Ginger] I was assigned

to support the first crew

that was getting ready to fly on board

the yet-to-be-constructed

International Space Station.

So I got assigned

to Captain William Shepherd,

Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko.

[Ginger] Here's the person

who's going to live in there.

[Bill] Sergei, clean up your room.

Open the door and throw everything out.

[Ginger] Those guys were great.

From an age perspective,

Yuri was more my age,

Sergei was about the age

of my older brother,

and Shep was 20 years older

and kind of like a father figure.

So managing those three personalities

took a unique skill set.

[Bill] This was a new vehicle.

It had components

from 15 different countries.

The pieces were not gonna come together

until they met each other in orbit.

Many of the techniques and procedures

we needed to operate it

had not been written yet.

So our training was very much

"fly by the seat of your pants."

[Sergei in Russian] The training

was intense and unusual,

even by modern standards.

The level of our training

was well above average,

because we studied a lot of things

just in case there's an emergency

we cannot predict.

We trained both in Houston

and here in Star City.

It was a very interesting and friendly

experience exchange, information exchange,

emotional exchange, impressions exchange,

because everyone could learn

something new.

[Ginger] It was a wonderful experience,

and if I had never watched the news,

I would never have suspected

that there would be any antagonism

between Russia and the US,

based on my experience.

Both of us have been in competition

since the early '60s,

trying to get to space,

the old space race,

but now we recognize that if we're gonna

go beyond low-Earth orbit,

if we're gonna go to the Moon or Mars,

the only way to do that

is to do it together.

[Bill] When we did land survival, we did

it in the winter outside of Moscow,

and it was very wet and cold.

We were in a boilerplate capsule,

as if we had just landed,

we got out in our survival suits,

and we had to build a little camp

and then survive.

It was an extremely good experience

to bond the crew,

and for time for us

to really get to know each other

and contribute to what each of us

could offer as strengths and weaknesses.

[Bill] We've been here for two days.

Our launch is three days away, on Tuesday.

Everything in the vehicle looks

ready to go. Crew's well trained.

We've been ready for probably a year

to go fly in space.

It's just kind of a quiet time,

thinking about everything we have to do

once we start flying,

and Tuesday morning, we'll be ready.

[interviewer] Beth, any thoughts?

Just still, I think, hard to believe

that we're actually here,

and just looking forward

to watching a great launch, so…

[Bill] We launched

on the 31st of October, 2000.

We're out in Baikonur

way out in the desert in Kazakhstan.

We sign our names

to the door of the room that we're in.

I drew a little picture of Space Station.

[commentator] Bill Shepherd's now joined

by Johnson Space Center Director,

Mr. George Abbey.

This is just before

the crew members were set

to head over to the suit-up room

this morning shortly after wake-up.

[Bill] We have a little breakfast,

and then we go out

to the launch pad in a bus.

[commentator] Bill Shepherd,

the commander of Expedition 1,

along with Yuri Gidzenko

and Sergei Krikalev, now boarding a bus.

The crew members will again head over

to the suit-up room.

[Bill] The Russian approach to rules

is often quite different than the US,

and that's one of the things

you get to appreciate sometimes.

In the United States,

we have a very regimented procedure

for how you deal with friends and family

right before the launch.

I waved goodbye to my wife

about two hours before we launched,

and then we're driving away in the bus,

and I saw her through the window.

But then right as we're getting ready

to go out to the rocket,

she surprised me from behind.

Whoa! This was…

It was great, but it was just

kind of an unexpected moment

that you would not find in the US program.

[commentator] Bill Shepherd, on the left…

on the right of the commander.

Now heading to the launch pad.

[Ginger] I was in Baikonur, Kazakhstan,

and as soon as they shut the hatch,

I started hyperventilating,

because I felt like

my brother and my dad, basically,

were locked on a rocket,

and I couldn't process that.

And one of the Russian generals got me

and he's moving me through the crowd,

and he says…

[speaks Russian]

That means, "It's the mother of the crew."

And he was trying to part the crowd

so I could see my crew on video,

and it made me feel a lot better.

We became a family, and we all still

stay in touch to this day,

so it was a wonderful experience.

- [woman] Ignition.

- [man] T-minus ten seconds, nine…

[Bill] The day, it was very foggy.

We wouldn't have launched

in the United States

because you need

a little bit of visibility,

which we didn't have that day

in Kazakhstan,

but the Russians fired up

and flew right through it.

[commentator]

Lift-off of the Soyuz rocket,

beginning the first expedition

to the International Space Station

and setting the stage

for permanent human presence in space.

[Ginger] Physically, you feel the heat,

you feel the vibrations,

but I guess because I had

such a personal connection to them,

it felt… I could feel it here.

It was this culmination of the actual

physical event that was going on

but actually

the last four years of my life

and the personal connection I had

with these people.

It was overwhelming and I don't know

that I can describe what it felt like

to watch that particular crew launch.

[Sergei in Russian] Yes! We've arrived!

We've finally arrived!

[conversation in Russian]

[Bill] It's uncomfortable,

somewhat awkward,

but the vehicle itself was very safe

and we had a good ride to orbit,

and my sense of surety, if you will,

that we were gonna have a good mission

was pretty high.

[commentator] In a few seconds,

we will have the docking,

the first mechanical contact.

[commentator 2] Six meters distance.

Five. Four.

[woman] Four.

[commentator 2] Three meters.

- Two meters.

- [commentator] Two.

[woman] Three.

- [commentator] And…

- [commentator 2] And…

[commentator] Contact.

We have a successful docking.

- The people are applauding here.

- [commentator 2] I can confirm that.

So the first crew of the International

Space Station have reached their home.

We docked on the second of November.

It took a while to equalize the pressure

and then open the hatch,

and then our mission started.

[in Russian] The first time!

The new station.

The new International Space Station.

[in English] Okay, it's this.

[Bill] You might think

the commander wanted to be

the first one through the hatch,

but I really didn't wanna do that

for two reasons.

One is Sergei and Yuri

had had a lot of experience

with docking and opening hatches

and doing it correctly.

I was the neophyte.

I didn't think it was my place to get

in front of them and try and do that.

But the second thing was,

as the commander,

I wanted one of them to have the honor

of being the first one in.

[in Russian]

Somebody has to turn on the lights.

[Sergei in Russian] I remember knowing

by touch where the switches were,

so we switched on the lights,

and it was kind of a seminal event.

♪ I wonder how a gap can feel this much ♪

♪ How a gap can feel

Like something this big ♪

♪ How it multiplies in my veins ♪

♪ And in my blood and home ♪

[Sergei] Well, I think looking back,

we can see it was a historic moment.

But back then

we were completely immersed in our work.

We realized that we had reached

a station that was in a dormant mode

and none of the systems could

really support the crew's functions.

Ahead of us there was

rather important and rather urgent work

to activate all of the station systems

for it to begin to work as it should,

supporting the crew's lives.

[Bill] We had about an hour and a half

before we were headed over Europe

and we were gonna have

a live press conference with the ground.

And we had to find a TV cable,

we had to hook it up, set the TV up,

turn the lights on,

make sure the sound was right.

We couldn't find any of this stuff.

So we're scrambling around

inside the module like madmen

to figure out what this stuff was

and where to set it up,

and we did it just in time.

Just as the crackling started

when the radio said

we're in contact with the ground

and we turned the TV on and it was done.

It was frantic.

The first expedition on Space Station

requests permission

to take the radio call sign Alpha.

[man laughs]

[man] Temporarily taken as Alpha.

Go ahead.

Have a good day.

The little red light went off,

we turned the camera off,

and we were just sitting there saying

we're done with the day.

[insects buzz]

[woman] I grew up in rural Iowa,

in the south-western part of the state,

on a farm.

Closest town had 32 people

when I was growing up.

It's now, like, only 11 or so,

so it's pretty rural.

Not a lot of folks around.

The cornfields, the soybean rows,

the rolling hills,

it's just a beautiful area to grow up.

The night skies, of course, are wonderful.

There's just

not a lot of light pollution around.

I remember as a kid looking at the stars

and watching for meteorites

as they would enter the atmosphere.

[man] Okay, Neil, we can see you

coming down the ladder now.

[Neil Armstrong] Okay, I just checked,

getting back up to that first step, Buzz.

It's not even collapsed too far,

but it's adequate to get back up.

[woman] The night of the Moon landing,

July 20th, 50 years ago,

which is kind of amazing to me

to think of at this point,

but I was nine years old,

and that was past our bedtime.

So it was a big deal to even just get

to stay up and watch in our pajamas

as they took those first steps

on the Moon.

[Armstrong] Okay, I'm gonna

step off the LM now.

That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

[woman] It left an imprint in me,

gave me a desire to want to be

an explorer like those guys.

My name is Peggy Whitson,

and I'm a former astronaut.

As a youngster I was pretty quiet.

I didn't really tell a lot of people

I wanted to become an astronaut.

It wasn't until I got to college

that I started sharing my goal.

My parents were always

extremely supportive,

even though I really don't think

my mother much cared for the idea

of me getting into a rocket.

[laughs]

I applied to be an astronaut

for a course of ten years

before I was selected.

Over those ten years they were

having selections every two years

and I was being rejected

on a bi-yearly cycle,

getting these wonderful little postcards

saying I was rejected.

I think just some of that

farmer-stubborn,

never-give-up kind of thing

kept me going.

Looking back on it,

it doesn't seem rational or logical

that I would keep pushing

and keep pushing,

and keep trying

in spite of being rejected all the time.

["The Place I Want To Be" playing]

♪ Old town seven times erased ♪

♪ Crawled out from the pyre again ♪

♪ This is the place I want to be ♪

♪ Is the place I'll fall ♪

♪ Silkworm spin a thread for me ♪

♪ No waste

Nothing left that I don't need ♪

♪ Yours is the face I want to see ♪

♪ It's the place I'm warm ♪

♪ And I won't turn my back on this ♪

[Peggy] "Dear younger me.

You just watched on TV

as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

took the first steps on the Moon.

That moment in time

planted a seed of inspiration in you.

Now it's up to you to nourish that seed

and grow it into more than just a dream.

It will be ten years of applying

before ever becoming an astronaut.

The rejections will be discouraging,

but in your typical style,

you will just keep trying.

All those years of anticipation

will be surpassed

when the solid rocket boosters ignite

and you are literally

roaring into space."

[reporter] Peggy Whitson, rocketing

towards the International Space Station.

[Peggy] "Believe it or not,

you will spend more time in space

than any other American astronaut,

and earn the nickname Space Ninja.

You will grow soybeans on orbit,

while your father

will grow soybeans on Earth.

You will walk in space ten times.

You will find that living in space

can actually become a home.

You will be a role model.

I'm still struggling with this one,

so you need to step up a bit earlier

than I have done.

You will learn that you are so much more

than you are capable of

and more than you might imagine

or even dream.

Sincerely, the older you."

♪ And I won't turn my back on this ♪

[in Russian] I'm Sergey Volkov,

a Russian pilot and cosmonaut.

My father, Aleksandr Volkov,

also went to space, to the Mir station.

I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine,

when my father was an instructor pilot.

Then he was selected

to join a cosmonaut group

and our family moved to Star City

in 1978.

I was four at the time,

so it feels like

I've lived my whole life in Star City.

Because my father was a cosmonaut,

I was seeing not just

the public side of the profession.

I saw it from the inside,

and maybe that's why I didn't dream

of becoming a cosmonaut as a child.

This profession seemed so heroic

and so difficult to me.

When I grew up,

I made the conscious decision

to take on the responsibility

and accept the risks.

It was strange

because my father

was the commanding officer

and he learned about me joining

by looking through case files

of the candidates

selected for the physical.

So he came home one night

with a question,

"Have you decided

to become a cosmonaut?"

So we talked,

and that's when my mother learned

about me wanting to be a cosmonaut.

Of course, it came as a surprise

for them, to put it mildly.

He came to all three of my take-offs.

It's a complicated mix of feelings,

but of positive feelings,

because you train very hard,

for a long time.

It took me ten years.

My father led me to the rocket.

We walked together, he supported me,

we walked from the bus

across the take-off pad,

and he walked with me to the lift.

Then when we were lifted up

inside the rocket,

into our own spaceship,

we were closed in.

You hear the rocket come alive.

Valves open, fuel moves, the liquids,

you're inside, you're one with it,

and when the launch actually starts,

you hear the engines work down there,

this calm vibration, the right kind.

The second the rocket goes,

that first overload,

these three people,

not just me, but the whole crew,

are the happiest people on Earth.

["Sun Forest" playing]

♪ I lay in the forest amongst

The butterflies and the fireflies ♪

♪ And the burning horses

And the flaming trees ♪

♪ As a spiral of children

Climb up to the sun ♪

♪ Waving goodbye to you

And goodbye to me ♪

♪ As the past pulls away

And the future begins ♪

♪ I say goodbye to all that

As the future rolls in ♪

♪ Like a wave, like a wave ♪

♪ And the past with its savage undertow ♪

♪ Lets go ♪

♪ Come on everyone, come on everyone ♪

♪ A spiral of children

Climbs up to the sun ♪

♪ To the sun, to the sun

And on each golden rung ♪

♪ A spiral of children

Climbs up to the sun ♪

[thunder crashes]

[rain falls]

[man] I remember having this recurring,

it wasn't really a dream,

it was more like just this idea,

this feeling.

I know it sounds weird,

and I'm not kind of a believer

in this kind of weird stuff like this,

but it's true, I had this feeling

that someday I would live

in a really small space,

and it wouldn't be

particularly unpleasant being there.

And once I flew into space

and lived in the crew quarters

on the International Space Station,

it just seemed like my childhood memory.

Very strange.

My name's Scott Kelly.

I am a former NASA astronaut.

Spent a lot of time

on the space station.

Over 500 days.

My family was me, my twin brother, Mark,

my mom and dad,

who were both police officers.

I was a very rambunctious kid

that could not pay attention in school.

I know that's somewhat counter-intuitive

to what people think of an astronaut.

You think, "That guy's an astronaut.

He must have been the smartest kid

in the class, the overachiever."

But that was not me.

["(Don't Fear) The Reaper" playing]

I was the kid

in the back of the room,

always distracted,

looking out the window,

looking at the clock,

trying to make it go faster.

[school bell rings]

I was a good kid, you know.

But I had no motivation at all

to do anything related to school.

♪ Come on, baby ♪

♪ Don't fear the reaper ♪

♪ Baby, take my hand ♪

Thinking back to when we were kids,

I don't know how our mother didn't,

like, send us away to some home.

We were probably teenagers

when finally she says,

"Can you guys

just please stop running everywhere?"

And I felt, like, "It's not possible.

I cannot not run everywhere,"

or do whatever seemed like

taking unnecessary risk as a kid.

I went to college

because I didn't know what else to do,

and that seemed like the thing to do,

so I went,

but really was

on kind of that fast-track

to being a, you know,

first-year college dropout.

Then one day

I'm just walking across the campus,

and I happen to go

into the college bookstore,

saw this book on the end of the aisle,

had a really cool title,

it had a red, white and blue cover,

just made me wanna pick it up,

looked exciting.

I remember just lying there

for a few days

on my unmade,

college freshman, dorm-room bed

and just read the stories

of the fighter pilots

that later became test pilots

that became the original Mercury,

Gemini and Apollo astronauts.

The book was The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe.

It inspired me

to want to do what they did.

Sometimes you mention that to people

and they're, like,

you know, 18-year-old kid

reads a book,

decides he or she is gonna

become a NASA astronaut.

That's a giant leap.

But, in retrospect, really what it was

was a bunch of much, much smaller,

manageable steps,

just one built upon the other.

Become good student,

go into the military,

fly fighter planes

off the aircraft carrier,

become a test pilot,

and then maybe

at least I would have a chance.

I did apply.

My twin brother also applied.

I figured there was no way I was gonna

get selected, so I loaned him my suit.

Then they call me

a couple of months later, tell me,

"Hey, we wanna interview you as well."

So I tell my brother, "Hey, Mark,

NASA called me for an interview,

but you understand, you know,

you gotta buy me a new suit, right,

'cause just how ridiculous

would that look,

me showing up in the same clothes?"

But he didn't.

So I have the only suit that's been

selected to be an astronaut twice.

Okay, Scott, the weather's great,

Endeavour's ready to fly

after four and a half years,

so good luck, Godspeed

and have some fun up there.

[Scott] Well, thanks, Mike.

We'll see you in a couple of weeks,

and thanks for loaning us

your space shuttle.

Good, Scott. Thanks a lot. Take

good care of that great ship Endeavour.

[man] T-minus ten,

nine, eight, seven, six.

Go for main engines start.

Four, three, two, one, zero.

And lift-off of space shuttle Endeavour.

♪ Sun is shinin' in the sky ♪

♪ There ain't a cloud in sight ♪

♪ It's stopped rainin'

Everybody's in the play ♪

♪ And don't you know ♪

♪ It's a beautiful new day, hey ♪

[commentator] Endeavour

rolling on to the proper alignment,

heads down, wings level, for the

eight-and-a-half-minute ride to orbit,

taking aim on the International

Space Station for docking on Friday.

[Scott] It looks like the space shuttle

lifts off slowly.

When you're inside of it,

there is nothing slow about that.

It's seven million pounds of thrust

instantly on your back

and you feel like

you can feel every pound of it.

[commentator]

One minute, 30 seconds into the flight.

Endeavour currently traveling

almost 2,000 miles an hour.

[Scott] You know you are

in this incredibly complex machine

that is operating

at really the limits of our ability

to produce energy in a spacecraft.

Feel every pound

of that seven million pounds of thrust.

It is absolutely crazy.

[commentator]

Booster rockets are confirmed staging.

A good solid rocket booster separation.

Guidance now converging.

Endeavour traveling almost 4,000

miles an hour, 47 miles in altitude.

We're coming up

on the point of negative return,

where the shuttle

will be too far down range,

too high in altitude

to return to the launch site

in the event of an engine failure.

[man] Endeavour, negative return.

[Scott] Negative return.

[commentator] Standing by

for external tank separation.

External tank separation confirmed.

Endeavour now in its preliminary orbit.

Commander Scott Kelly now maneuvering

Endeavour to the correct orientation.

[Scott] Copy. Nominal MECO.

OMS-1 is not required.

[commentator] A smooth climb to orbit

for Endeavour

and its seven crew members, heading for

what could be two weeks in space

and a visit

to the International Space Station

with docking planned

for Friday afternoon.

[man] As a glass artist,

I'm inspired by the planets.

Actually, I've always been inspired

by the planets.

Even when I was a kid,

I loved looking up at the stars.

Glass is just sand.

It's part of the Earth.

When it's hot, glass is alive.

It has an inner light.

It is a weird twist of fate

that I was making planets

and making space-related artwork

long before Cady and I met.

My name is Josh Simpson.

My wife, Cady Coleman, is an astronaut.

[commentator] Cady Coleman,

Paolo Nespoli, and Dmitri Kondratyev

head toward

the International Space Station.

Soyuz lighting up the night sky

there at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

It's a good pitch program

according to flight controllers.

[Cady] Thrusters are stable.

[commentator] The Soyuz is delivering

102 tons of thrust

from its four boosters

and single engine.

The first stage of the Soyuz

measures 68 feet in length

and 24 feet in diameter.

It is burning liquid fuel

for the first two minutes

and six seconds of the flight.

[Josh] There's this burst of light

and this rocket just lifts majestically

up into the air.

As it goes higher up into the sky,

the light gets brighter,

until it diminishes and just becomes

this little, bright pinpoint of light.

It's amazing to think that someone

that you love is that pinpoint of light.

[commentator]

A live view inside the Soyuz.

Paolo Nespoli there

on the right-hand side.

Dmitri Kondratyev

there in the middle seat.

He is the commander of the spacecraft.

And on the left-hand side's

Cady Coleman.

[Cady] Parameters of the launch vehicle

are normal.

Okay, copy. Everything is normal on board.

150 seconds.

I'm Cady Coleman.

I'm an astronaut who lived on

the space station for almost six months.

My dad worked on the Sealab program,

where men first lived under the sea,

and I think it became normal to me

that it just was part of life,

that people would live in places

that not many people lived.

The bottom of the ocean

was part of our world,

we just hadn't been there yet.

I loved being underwater

and having it be effortless,

where you could breathe

and you could see,

and I felt like I was in somebody else's

world and I got to explore it.

One of my favorite places

on the space station is our cupola.

It is amazing up here.

Windows on all sides.

When I found out

that I got accepted as an astronaut,

I had been dating a really nice guy

who lived in Western Massachusetts

that I had met by basically

calling a wrong phone number.

One night, the phone rang

and I answered the phone, and I said,

[in Russian accent]

"Hello. What do you want?"

And this perfectly nice woman said,

"Is this Peter?"

And I said, "No, this is not Peter.

My name is Olga Isnitchko

Eavorskayagoopdamehamatalliaihgatana."

And she said, "I'm so sorry.

I thought you were Peter Masters.

I'm looking for his wife, Amy."

And when she said that,

I knew who she was looking for,

because Amy had worked

in my studio years before.

And so I said,

"Well, if you want to find Amy,

you have to look

in the telephone directory,

but when you get Amy on the phone,

you must say hello from Olga Isnitchko

Eavorskayagoopdamehamatalliaihga."

She was so polite,

and I just kept pulling her leg.

And so I made her practice this name

over and over and over again,

and she finally got it, and I hung up.

But when she got her friend Amy

on the phone, she said,

"There's this really weird man

at the place where you worked,

you used to work."

And Amy just cracked up and said,

"That's Josh.

He disguises his voice at night.

He hates… He doesn't wanna get

an answering machine."

And so Cady decided to call me back.

And so she called me back

with a Russian accent,

and she said she was from Russian KGB

and there had been numerous reports

of glass-breaking.

And I said,

"I'm not Russian. I'm Bulgarian."

And she said,

"We do them too, and you're history."

When we met, it was obvious to me

that we should be together.

It took her a long time

to come around to that viewpoint.

When you tell people

that you live in Houston

and your boyfriend

lives in Western Massachusetts,

they look at you, like,

"Well, that's gonna last."

And so we invented a new word

which was "sweetheart,"

which seemed somehow more long-term.

But I was really glad

that I sort of already knew the person

I was gonna spend

the rest of my life with.

Before I applied, before, there was

sort of this aspect of this job

that's hard for people

to get their arms around.

"What does it mean?

What does it mean for her?

What does it mean for me?

What's our life gonna be like?"

It was really nice

to have already met somebody

that already seemed to love

all those things about me.

[Josh] When Cady

was accepted as an astronaut,

the first thing that happened

was that you have to show up to work

at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

And so when Jamey was born,

we knew that either

Jamey was going to have to travel,

or, because I have a glass studio here,

it turned out that I became

the prime parent and Cady would travel,

and I've always understood

that I'm gonna be the prime parent.

When Cady got first assigned

even to her first mission,

I was pretty worried

about what was gonna happen to her,

whether she was gonna be safe,

whether it was gonna be okay,

until I was kind of an emotional wreck.

But then it occurred to me that

there are literally thousands of people

who are concerned

with her safety and well-being,

and nothing that I'm doing,

nothing, no amount of worry,

no amount of stress on my part

was gonna help one way or the other.

And I also thought about the fact

that Cady took this job

because, well, she wanted to do

that kind of exploration,

she also knew full well

the dangers involved.

And she's completely…

I don't think she wants to die,

but I think she's willing to make

that sacrifice if that's the way it works.

And I just thought, "Well,

if my sweetheart is willing to do that,

then I should just let go there."

It's gonna fine,

or it's not gonna be fine,

but nothing that I'm gonna do or say

is gonna make any difference.

And that works right until

you get to the, "Ten, nine, eight…"

And then, of course,

all of that's out the window.

You're completely…

There's just this flow of worry

and pride and frightened emotion,

and then the rocket goes off

and about eight minutes later,

they're in space.

Bye, Cady.

[interviewer] Josh,

Cady's ticket to ride is behind you

here on the launch pad

at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Your thoughts as you saw

this whole process. Amazing for you?

[Josh] Just a whole cascade

of thoughts, really,

that this is, for Cady, the culmination

of a dream, a lifetime of preparation.

This is the spot where Yuri Gagarin

left from and where Sputnik left from,

and where my sweetheart is going to go.

It's very significant.

I think she's ready,

although, knowing my wife,

she'll be packing right to the last

instant before she goes on board.

The morning that she took off,

we woke up in the middle of the night,

it must have been 2:00 in the morning,

and we drove to the launch site.

It was really cold.

We were a mile away,

but it was just sort of a cement platform

where we viewed the launch,

and it was so cold

that no amount of clothing helped.

The cold just cut right through you.

[commentator] Here on the ground

in Baikonur, a crowd of family and friends

and NASA officials,

as well as Roscosmos officials,

are watching tonight's launch

less than a mile away

from the Soyuz itself.

It was really challenging for Jamey

at launch because I think that sudden,

"I understand what Dad's

been talking about all this time.

That's a rocket.

That's my mom. She's gone."

And there was

a flood of emotion for him,

and, for me, I was concerned about him

as much as I was concerned for Cady.

And I realize that he was turning to me

and was kind of hanging on to me

and he was in tears.

Watching it go up

was profound for Jamey.

I think he realized that…

his mom was really gone.

[man] Cady Coleman blasted out last week

on board the Soyuz rocket out of Russia,

leaving behind her husband

and ten-year-old son for six months' time.

John, I know that you've been anxious

to talk to Cady up there in space,

so why don't you go first?

[John] Cady, to you,

are you getting settled in?

You got the toothbrush put away

and the socks in the sock drawer?

You know, I've gotten

so I feel actually right at home here,

I think it's just like any other place,

and then sometimes there's things

that remind me that we're in space.

Like this.

- You know, you…

- Take it.

It's another one of those bad-hair days

for Cady up in space.

[Jamey] I remember, like,

saying goodbye to my mom,

like, seeing her walk out

of the sort of prep facility.

And I was, like,

"Okay, like, this is it," you know.

And I hadn't started crying quite then,

but then when I saw the rocket

ascending into the sky,

I was, like, "Wow, my mom isn't here."

It really brought me to tears

'cause it was just, like,

"Wow, my mom

isn't on the planet anymore."

My name is Koichi Wakata.

I'm a JAXA astronaut.

I flew in space four times.

I went to the International

Space Station three times.

I was born and grew up

in the north of Tokyo.

When I was five years old,

I had a strong longing

for flying in space

when I saw the Apollo lunar landing.

At the time,

there were no Japanese astronauts,

so, even for a small boy,

it seemed like an unreachable goal.

[robot in Japanese] Hello, Mr. Wakata.

[in Japanese] Pleased to meet you,

first talking robot in space.

[in Japanese] Pleased to meet you,

first Japanese commander of the ISS.

[Koichi in English] When we go

to deep space, like to Mars,

it takes 20 minutes for the conversation

to go through the distance

between the Earth and Mars,

and so the real-time conversation

is not going to happen.

I think this kind of AI buddy

may be very helpful

for your psychological boost.

The space station is a spacecraft

in low-Earth orbit.

The purpose of the space station

is to serve as a laboratory,

and it's an outpost to utilize

the unique environment of micro-gravity,

zero gravity, basically,

in order to conduct a variety

of experiments in science and technology

that can benefit the lives

of many people around the world.

We have only six crew members usually.

Each one of the crew members is tasked

to lead a certain part of the work

on board the space station.

Of course, we all have to be able

to function in case of an emergency.

We have to have a basic understanding

of the operational skills

of the systems on board.

A one-week, two-week flight

can pass really quickly,

but I noticed that after you spend

more than a month,

I felt sort of like a difference.

It's not like a business trip anymore.

It's like I'm living in a new home

away from home.

Change up. Here we go.

Of course, I truly enjoyed

my camaraderie with my crewmates.

That part is great.

- It looks good. Thank you.

- All right, sure.

But it was tough to be separated

from the family for many months.

How's it going? How was school?

- Pretty good.

- Pretty good?

All right, well, I'm gonna let you go.

Is that right? Okay.

All right, I'll look for it.

- Yeah.

- Love you. Bye.

[sirens wail]

[horn blares]

Do not be going in there, bro. Get out!

The top floor's collapsed down.

I saw it blow and then ran like hell.

[indistinct conversations over radio]

[man] Hey, Steve, how's it going?

[Steve] Well, Frank, we're not having

a very good day down here on Earth.

[Frank] We had no live newscast

or active internet.

We had to rely on the ground to tell us

what was going on in those early days.

I called the ground,

and he began to describe the aircraft

crashing into the World Trade Center.

Shortly before I called,

the Pentagon had been hit.

And then while we were talking,

the plane had crashed in Pennsylvania,

and he told me about that.

It was clear to me we were under attack.

I looked at the map of the world

that we keep up on one of the laptops,

and I realized

that we were crossing Canada

and that we would be

right over New York,

and I realized we were gonna be

over New England in a few seconds.

So I signed off, raced around,

found a video camera and a window

facing in the right direction,

and as we crossed Maine,

I could look back on New York City.

And of course the whole US

was clear of clouds that day,

it was a gorgeous day,

and I could clearly see a big column

of smoke rising out of Manhattan,

out over Long Island

and over the Atlantic.

And I zoomed in with the video camera,

and as I did, this big, grey cloud

enveloped southern Manhattan.

It turned out later what I was seeing

was the second tower collapse.

I told the guys, "90 minutes from now,

when we come back over the US,

I want every camera we've got

pointed at the ground."

As we went over Maine,

we could see New York City

and the smoke from the fires.

Our prayers and thoughts

go out to all the people there

and everywhere else here.

I'm looking up and down the east coast

to see if I can see anything else.

[woman] Frank,

that's an accurate assessment.

[Frank] All the contrails which normally

cover the country in a spider web

had disappeared,

because they had grounded

all the airplanes.

That really brought it home that

this was a totally different world now.

They had had to evacuate the federal

facility where our mission control was

and move them

to an undisclosed location,

which I still don't know where it was.

So we were operating

with Moscow primarily,

and they were

very supportive, sympathetic,

and trying to give us

as much information as they could.

Whenever one of their specials

would come on to talk to us

about a system or an experiment

or whatever, they would frequently say,

"Where's Frank?",

you know, "How's Frank doing?"

It was very meaningful,

'cause I knew them all by name,

and they would express their condolences

and they were really sorry

for what happened.

Interesting thing is, 94 Russians

also died in the World Trade Center,

and we had no idea, at that time,

how many from overseas were there

and lost their lives.

The next day,

I got a call from TJ Creamer,

who was my support astronaut

on the ground, and he said,

"Frank, I've got some bad news."

And it turned out that my classmate

from the Naval Academy,

who was classmates with Shep and myself,

was the captain

of American Airlines Flight 77

that was crashed into the Pentagon.

Chic was an F-4 pilot, like me,

he was an aerospace engineer,

we had actually played in the drum

and bugle corps together for a while,

so we were friends.

And so he had died in that crash.

I could only imagine

what it was like for him.

I didn't find out much

until after I returned

about what the particulars were

of that flight,

but I felt sure he had fought

as much as he could.

It really brought it home to me

and it made it very personal

at that point.

I would like to send a message

from the station down in memory of Chic

and of all of our graduates who perished

and of all the victims of this tragedy,

something that has

never been done before from space.

So I'd like to ask all of you to rise

for a moment of silence

as we play something

from International Space Station Alpha.

[plays "Last Post" on bugle]

September 12th, 2001, 1934 hours.

One day after the attacks of 9/11.

Well, obviously the world changed today.

What I say or do is very minor

compared to the significance

of what happened to our country.

The most overwhelming feeling,

being where I am, is one of isolation.

It's difficult to describe how it feels

to be the only American

completely off the planet

at a time such as this.

The feeling that I should be there

with all of you, dealing with this,

helping in some way, is overwhelming.

It's horrible to see smoke

pouring from wounds in your own country

from such a fantastic vantage point.

The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft

dedicated to improving life on the Earth

and watching life being destroyed

by such willful, terrible acts

is jolting to the psyche,

no matter who you are.

And the knowledge that everything

will be different than when we launched

by the time we land

is a little disconcerting.

I miss all of you very much.

I can't be with you there in person,

and we have a long way to go

to complete our mission,

but be certain that my heart is with you

and know you are in my prayers.

Humbly, Frank.

[woman] I grew up in a tiny little

village in the Italian Alps called Malé.

Two thousand souls.

Growing up, I had the fortune

of having this beautiful starry sky

at night, you know.

It was just this very personal

connection to the sky.

This dream of flying to space,

become an astronaut,

I think it arose

out of a combination of things,

and it's very difficult to pinpoint

exactly what makes you fancy things

in this world of childhood.

[children laugh]

I'm Samantha Cristoforetti

and I'm an astronaut

with the European Space Agency.

We had started out

with over 8,000 applicants,

and then here we were,

after a year, only ten of us.

Ten young Europeans

from different countries.

At that point,

we were almost all in touch.

There was going to be

a press conference,

and the European Space Agency

was going to announce,

"Here are our new astronauts."

And two days before that, at nine o'clock

at night, we still had not heard.

I mean, my level of tension

was way up there.

I just felt

that I couldn't take it anymore.

And then all of a sudden,

there was this email, and it's like,

"Dear Miss Cristoforetti…"

You just felt like

the universe had stopped

and it turned back

and smiled at me at that time.

The fact that you are selected

as an astronaut is huge, you know.

You're not any more

one of the thousands, ten thousands,

maybe millions of people

who dream of becoming astronauts.

You actually are selected

to train as an astronaut.

But then this new phase of your life comes

when you're just waiting and hoping

that this moment is going to come

and is going to come soon.

One of the greatest memories I have

from the time leading up

to my space flight is being in Baikonur.

That's where we launched from.

And you go to Baikonur twice.

You go to Baikonur

before your own launch,

and you go to Baikonur

six months before,

when you are actually the back-up crew.

So, you are, in theory, ready to fly

instead of the prime crew

if the prime crew has an issue.

And we were down there,

Terry, Anton and myself,

in May 2014, as the back-up crew,

and that was the most wonderful time.

We are usually allowed to go out

and have a jog

with other people

who are in quarantine with us.

We kind of bend the rules because

we'd just go out without any escort.

And basically what I wanted to do,

I had a bottle with me,

and I had put in

a picture of the three of us.

We had signed thousands

of those pictures in the days before,

and so I had grabbed one

with our signature,

and I had added an email address

that I had just done for that purpose.

And I thought,

"We'll just throw it in the river

and then maybe

some mysterious inhabitant of the steppe

one day will write back to us."

We are about to come back

and we realize a little bit upstream

there are, like, these wild horses,

such a beautiful image.

There were probably, maybe

20, 30 of those, and they had come,

there were no people,

just the wild horses,

and they had come to drink at the river.

And it was such a beautiful,

powerful scene, you know.

And for me it was just something

that brought me into the emotional mood

of then watching the launch

in the night.

[man] And lift-off.

The international crew on their way

to the International Space Station.

Right now, looking good.

First stage performance. The Soyuz

delivering 930,000 pounds of thrust.

That's four boosters

and single core and engine.

[continues indistinctly]

We like to say in the space business,

you don't know

that you're going to space

until, you know, that rocket that you're

sitting on is actually taking off.

[commentator] TMA-15M.

Three new crew members headed

to the International Space Station,

Anton Shkaplerov,

Samantha Cristoforetti and Terry Virts,

on their way to a six-month voyage

aboard the International Space Station.

["Bright Horses" playing]

♪ The bright horses have broken free

From the fields ♪

[commentator]

A minute, ten seconds into flight,

traveling about 1,100 miles per hour.

♪ They are horses of love

Their manes full of fire ♪

♪ They are parting the cities

Those bright burning horses ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Oh ♪

[Samantha] When you're

sitting inside the Soyuz,

and you're approaching Space Station,

you do not really see it.

What you see is like

a black and white image on the camera.

I mean, there's windows to the sides,

but you basically will not see

Space Station as you approach.

And that was my case.

However, when you get

to around 40, 50 meters out,

if you look out to the side,

you will start to catch a glimpse of it.

And here are like the solar panels

of the ISS, of the space station,

which are just gigantic,

which, of course,

I know in my mind how big they are,

but I've never actually seen them,

so, you know, this huge size.

But then, on top of that,

at that moment of transition,

and it's just really a few seconds

between daylight and night,

the sun is basically lying

very low on the horizon

and it's just this spot of orange,

and the light that comes in that moment

is this very bright orange light.

It's so overwhelming.

I had this feeling they were, like,

burning, they were like in flames.

[Samantha gasps] Oh, my God.

[man speaks in Russian]

I'm going, "Oh, my God, oh, my God."

And then of course

you hear Anton, my commander,

he's going like [speaks Russian]

which means, "Be quiet, be quiet."

Whatever I say is heard on the Earth,

you know, all the control centers.

It's not my proudest moment

from a professional point of view.

On the other hand, I'm also very happy

that it happened at that moment

because it made it so special,

the arrival to Space Station.

[man speaks in Russian]

[woman speaks in Russian]

[applause]

[Samantha] Actually, the moment

when we opened the hatch

and I floated into Space Station,

that was a moment of sheer happiness.

You open the hatch,

there's people out there waiting for you

who are welcoming you

into this new place and this new life,

and in a way

it felt like a new birth, you know,

and it was

incredibly, incredibly intense.

It's the end of all that preparation

and that initial journey,

and it's the beginning

of this experience

that I had looked forward to

for so long.

If you imagine our view,

from the space station, of the planet

as a show that planet Earth

puts on scene for us,

it's mute, it has no sound.

It's just an incredibly powerful

visual spectacle.

Just an incredibly beautiful view

when it's alive

because it changes all the time

and there's always something new

to discover.

[man] Columbia-Houston, comm check.

Columbia-Houston, UHF comm check.

Columbia-Houston, UHF comm check.

[man 2] Columbia out of communications

at present with Mission Control.

Flight controllers

are continuing to stand by

to regain communications

with the spacecraft.

- [man 3] Flight decks.

- [man] Go ahead, Max.

[man 3] FYI, I've just lost

four separate temperature transducers

on the left side of the vehicle,

the hydraulic return temperatures.

We've also lost

the nose-gear down talkback

and the right main-gear down talkback.

[man] Columbia-Houston, comm check.

CC flight. CC flight.

- [man 3] What did you say?

- Lock the doors.

[man 3] Copy.

My name is Ken Bowersox.

I was the commander on Expedition 6.

[man on radio] Astronaut John Glenn

of New Concord, Ohio.

Lieutenant-Colonel, United States…

[Ken] I decided I wanted to be

an astronaut when I was about seven.

I was in a car with my dad,

and on the radio there was a story

about John Glenn orbiting the Earth.

And I asked my dad what that meant,

and he told me, and I said,

"Oh, I think that's what I wanna do

when I grow up."

[commentator]

Our first view of Ken Bowersox

outside the hatch to the Quest Airlock

as the International Space Station

skirts just to the east

of Rio de Janeiro.

♪ Wherever you're going, I'm going ♪

♪ I'm going your way ♪

[Ken] Every Saturday morning

was clean-up time,

where we'd grab towels,

wipe down the handrails and vacuum.

We had a Saturday morning

teleconference scheduled.

We went in to start the teleconference

and the folks in Mission Control

asked us to just stand by.

It was usual that,

because it was Saturday morning,

the folks in Houston wanted

to get that teleconference over

as quickly as possible 'cause some

people wanted to go home, right?

So for them to ask us to wait

was a little bit different.

The center director

of Johnson Space Center came on

and told us

that Columbia had been lost on entry.

There was a lot of different meanings

to that for us.

The first was, "Well, what's happened

to our friends who are on Columbia?"

'Cause we knew those folks,

we worked with them in the office,

would fly with them in the T-38s,

sat in meetings with them,

talked to them in the hallways.

So the first thing was,

"What's happened to them?" you know.

Is there any chance

that they made it through?

Folks on the ground have been real good

about reducing our schedule

and we've had time

to grieve our friends.

And that was very important.

When you're up here this long,

you can't just bottle up your emotions

and focus all the time.

It's important for us to acknowledge

that the people on STS-107

were our friends,

that we had a connection with them,

and that we feel their loss.

The next impact to us was, "Well,

what does that mean for us to come home?"

Since the space shuttles

were under review,

we had to decide

when it would be safe to fly one again

and how to fly it safely.

The decision was made for us

to come home a different way,

to come home in a Soyuz spacecraft.

So we're packing up gear

to be returned home aboard shuttles

when they start flying again.

We'll have some refresher training to do

over the next month and a half or so.

My family spent most of their time

worrying about the people

that were affected on the ground,

the effect on the spouses

for the crew of Columbia.

But they also had a lot of inquiries

from different people

wanting to know how they felt

with their husbands up in space,

knowing that it was a risky business.

Everybody wanted to know

what we thought about the risk.

Let me start by sort of comparing

what a Soyuz flight is like

compared to a return in a space shuttle.

The space shuttle is a lot more

like flying on an airliner,

and the return from space is

very similar to flying on an airliner,

except you go from being weightless

to having your perceived weight be maybe

one and a half times your normal weight.

And then the final approach

is like a steep glide in an airliner

and you touch down on a runway.

It feels very much like any touchdown

from an international flight.

On a Soyuz, you get in, it's smaller,

everything is more compact.

Instead of sitting up,

like you would on an airliner,

you're kind of laying on your back,

and it's a much quicker trip home.

It's only a few hours back to Earth

rather than a day and a half or two

in a space shuttle.

It's a little bit more

like a carnival ride.

[man] And Expedition 6

now officially on its way back home,

with landing a little more

than three hours from now.

[Ken] The flight gets most interesting

when you start to get down

into the atmosphere.

First thing you see

is some glowing light

coming off the side of the capsule

and any other parts around it.

You see a bright orange glow

outside the windows.

You might see little droplets running

along the window that look like water

but are really something melted

on the spacecraft.

[man] At this point,

the crew should be feeling

the maximum G-load on the re-entry.

[man speaks in Russian]

We realized that we were having

an off-nominal type of entry

called a ballistic descent.

Once you reach

the ballistic descent mode,

there's not a lot for the crew

to interact with on the spacecraft,

and so you have some spare moments

to think about what you're doing

and to realize how little control

you have over the situation,

how you're trusting the engineers

who designed

and the technicians

who built that spacecraft,

and how everything's gotta work

if you're gonna survive.

I'm in the helicopter with the chief

of the astronaut office, Bob Cabana,

and they say, "We're in touch

with the crew. We're hearing the crew."

But it was a very faint call.

I could tell my boss

was really, really worried.

He said, "Why is the signal faint?

Can they hear them?"

I said, "They can't hear them.

They heard them on the radio

and then it disappeared."

Bob Cabana was like,

"Oh, no, we've lost another crew."

They said, "They did a ballistic entry."

To mean they're 400 kilometers away,

off-course,

and not in the right place,

not where we are.

When the parachutes come out, you get

rocked all around, shaken, rotated.

It feels pretty violent.

Again, that's where it feels

most like a carnival ride.

And then it gets peaceful,

and you coast and coast and coast down

underneath the parachutes.

There's sort of a big bang

as you hit the ground.

It feels like a car collision.

The vehicle gets drug a little bit

by the parachute if you have any wind,

and that jostles the crew around a bit,

and then everything gets quiet.

Absolutely quiet.

You start to smell the smoke

from the rockets.

You smell the grass outside.

You look out the window

and you can see the brown of the dirt

and the green of the grass,

and you know you're back on Earth.

We sat there

trying to talk to people on the radio,

and we weren't able to reach anybody.

After being there about 30 minutes,

we decided we should get out,

and Nikolai reached up

and opened the hatch

and crawled out of the spacecraft,

and I followed him after that,

and Don came third.

[Mike] We finally get there

after six hours to the landing site.

I see Ken and Nikolai and Don

sitting outside of the Soyuz.

There are little yellow buttercups

and daisies out there,

and it's just rolling plains.

I think there are wild horses out there

on that plain.

I said, "Well, how are you feeling?"

"We feel really tired, really weak."

I said, "What were the G's you had

during the entry?"

"Eight G's!" I said, "Really?"

So we kind of get them

into the helicopter.

And Don wants to lie down.

So he's lying down on the floor.

There's not much room.

Ken's kind of propped up

against a fuel tank in this helicopter,

no straps, nothing like that.

And he says, "Don't forget that."

I go, "What?" He says, "That big sack."

He said, "We didn't know if we were ever

gonna get our stuff back.

So we've got all of Don's films

and camera magazines."

And I picked it up and it was like

30, 40 pounds, you know, 20 kilos.

I said, "How did you put this

in the Soyuz?"

And Ken said, "Don had it on his lap."

Eight G's. Eight gravities.

Multiply that times 20 kilos,

that's 160 kilos on Don's chest.

I said, "You've had a… How could you

have put that on Don's chest?"

So, anyway, poor Don was kind of looking

a bit worse for wear

from that journey back to Earth.

[groans] I wave to the camera.

[Ken] We knew it was coming,

and so we were prepared for the G's.

In fact, at the point

where we saw it coming, we said,

"Okay, guys, let's get strapped down

in your seats,

'cause it's about to get fun, fast."

In fact, Nikolai was great.

He says, "This is gonna be fun."

- He was great.

- Nikolai said that?

He was like a cheerleader

all the way down,

and we're all straining against the G.

[grunts]

It was… quite an experience.

[laughter]

It's great that we had a chance

to ride in a vehicle

that was on its first flight

into the atmosphere.

And so I feel really lucky.

- [interviewer] Well, there we are.

- That's two.

[interviewer laughs]

Annie Bowersox. Annie, it's a great day.

The crew is home safe and sound.

Very successful landing.

How does Ken look?

How excited is he to be back?

He looks great.

He looks exactly the same

as when he left, maybe a little thinner.

And when I first saw him, it was like

the six months had just gone away.

He's eager to see our kids

when we get back to Houston

and we're really excited about that.

The boys are dying to see him.

What do you consider to be

the most important contribution,

legacy, the living history,

of Expedition 6?

What do you think

it will be most remembered for?

I think their flight showed

what an incredible team NASA has become

with their partners.

So much of this flight

was not as planned,

and it's just amazing

and it just clicked.

It's a great team.

["The Star-Spangled Banner" plays]

[Barack Obama] Last month,

we launched a new spacecraft

as part of a re-energized space program

that will send

American astronauts to Mars.

And in two months,

to prepare us for those missions,

Scott Kelly will begin

a year-long stay in space.

So, good luck, Captain.

Make sure to Instagram it.

We're proud of you.

[Scott] I thought, you know,

spending a year in space

is gonna be really challenging

psychologically and emotionally.

Eventually, I warmed up to the idea.

They had a selection process

and an interview.

It was interesting,

the very last question was,

"So, if you could get

the year-long space mission

or you could be

the chief of the astronaut office,

which would you prefer?"

And I said immediately,

I said, "Chief of the astronaut office."

And, like, two weeks later

somebody else got that job,

and I got assigned

to this year-long flight.

From the time you leave the United States

for a Russian Soyuz launch,

it's this whole process

of different traditions.

You have to visit the Kremlin.

You have to go to pay respects

to the cosmonauts in the Russian

and Soviet space program.

You had to look at the bell

and the cannon,

because previous crew members

have done that.

And then, a couple weeks before,

you fly down to Baikonur

and you go through similar

kind of traditions and preparations.

It's a, you know, iconic place.

[applause]

[woman] Hey, Scott, I know

you have a brother and you are twins.

Is it really difficult

not to see each other for one year?

[Scott] No, it's not.

[laughter]

[woman] Thank you.

[Scott] Heading to the launch pad,

the van stops in the same spot

that Yuri Gagarin stopped

and got out and peed on the tire.

So we have to get out,

undo our spacesuit,

pee on the tire, get back in,

button your spacesuit up,

and keep heading to the rocket.

You always get a blessing

from a Russian Orthodox priest,

which is generally

pretty cold water in your face.

'Cause they're not your superstitions

and traditions,

they seem a little bit odd,

but, yeah,

one of their big cultural things

is if their friends are going on a trip,

then they have to be there

to say goodbye,

even if that's at a base

of a fully fueled rocket.

There's like a hundred people up there

and you're just trying

to get through this crowd.

It's like madness. Crazy.

It's like a big party

at the base of the rocket.

There's smokers out there.

I've seen them. Yeah.

When you're in the Soyuz,

there's some dead time

where you don't have much to do.

So to help you pass the time,

the control center will pipe music

into the capsule.

So the crew picks out some songs.

I had a Bruce Springsteen song

and a Coldplay song.

I can tell you, I didn't pick

Roberta Flack, "Killing Me Softly."

One of the cosmonauts did.

I like the song,

it's a really, really good song,

but it doesn't seem quite appropriate

to have it playing

when you're sitting on basically a bomb

of liquid oxygen and liquid kerosene

that's designed to explode

underneath you.

["Killing Me Softly" playing]

♪ Strumming my pain with his fingers ♪

♪ Singing my life with his words ♪

♪ Killing me softly with his song ♪

♪ Killing me softly with his song ♪

♪ Telling my whole life with his words ♪

♪ Killing me softly ♪

♪ With his song ♪

[Scott] One of my kids,

I think it was, yeah, my youngest,

when I said,

"I'm going to the year-long mission,"

the reaction I got was, like,

"That's awesome!"

And when Misha called his wife

and said that he was gonna go

to space for a year, she started crying.

[chuckles]

So my family was excited.

Maybe that says something about me.

They were, like, excited

to get rid of me for a year.

"Can you go for two?"

[chuckles]

I previously had six months in space,

and I can remember six months

being a really long time to be anywhere

where you can't go home,

and you're floating,

and, you know, there's just a level

of uncomfortableness

about being in space for a long time.

But like most things,

as you get further away from them,

you remember the great things about it

and you forget the hardship

or the stuff that's hard.

[commentator] Scott Kelly,

Mikhail Kornienko, and Gennady Padalka,

the all-time record holder

for time in space among all of humanity,

launching flawlessly

and arriving just six hours later.

They made their way in

and were welcomed by the current

Expedition 43 crew on board,

Terry Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti

and Anton Shkaplerov,

who are already

several months into their mission.

But for Scott Kelly

and Mikhail Kornienko,

the first steps into the space station

and their home for the next 340 days.

[Scott] You miss, you know, your friends,

your family, people on the ground.

You miss the weather.

I always missed rain, the sound of it.

But you miss things like that, the sun,

miss going outside.

See, we got some creamed spinach,

asparagus and grilled chicken.

It's gonna go on a tortilla.

My spoon.

Can't let the little droplets

get too far.

Surface tension is very important.

If we didn't have surface tension

in space,

we'd be in big trouble

in a lot of areas.

Yeah. Oh!

Oh, man.

That was just made by a chef.

- Yep.

- And it is best before July 2016.

This is probably best before July 2013.

[both laugh]

You could actually

keep in touch pretty well.

We have a phone on board.

Generally, you can have

a video conference on the weekends,

so you get to see your family.

It's pretty good capability, actually.

You just can't see people in person.

Hi, Dad. How are you doing?

- [Scott] I'm doing good.

- Yeah?

- Got some visitors showing up tomorrow.

- Awesome.

Have you gotten

your Christmas presents yet?

Yeah, thank you for the T-shirt.

I think I put, like, a bell in there

that was like, "Number One Dad."

- Got the bell and the card too, yeah.

- Yeah.

- And the T-shirt was in there too.

- Yeah.

- All right, love you, Charlotte.

- Love you too. Talk to you then.

- Bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

I got Misha behind me.

Waking up too.

A lot of people don't realize this,

but when we're sitting here,

and we're looking at each other,

you're looking at me,

I'm looking at you,

what you see is filtered

by the air we're looking through.

When you're in space,

and the only air you're looking through

is between your eye and the visor,

or maybe between your eye

and the window,

it makes everything look

just spectacularly,

brilliantly colored and clear,

because you're looking through nothing,

there's nothing to filter your eye,

whether it's looking at the Earth

or looking at the space station.

And when you're outside, I mean,

it's just incredible. Incredible.

Oh!

Man, that feels good.

[woman] Welcome home.

Ah.

[woman] Back to Earth.

[ringing tone]

[Nigel] You've reached the voicemail

for Angela and Nigel Peake,

but I'm afraid we're not here

just at the moment.

Please leave us a message. We'll get

back to you as soon as we can.

Thank you very much.

[bleeps]

[Tim Peake]

Hello, Angela and Nigel Peake.

This is just your son calling

from the International Space Station.

I'm sorry you're not in,

but I will try and get you later.

[bleeps]

["Solid Ground" playing]

♪ How does it feel

When it's quiet and calm? ♪

♪ And will I be denied? ♪

♪ How will it feel

When it's time to move on? ♪

♪ Mother says kneel and pray ♪

♪ When it gets hard

I will roll those sleeves ♪

♪ Life can be so unkind ♪

♪ I will be found

On the edge of the world ♪

♪ Where there'll be no one around ♪

♪ Oh, solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

My name is Tim Peake,

and I'm an astronaut

with the European Space Agency.

I grew up in Westbourne,

which is a small village in West Sussex.

We had beautiful night skies.

I would, you know, often go out at night

and just look up at the stars,

and really ask myself the big questions

about our place in the universe

and how we got here,

and what created the universe,

and where it's going.

The ability to actually

go up there and travel,

to see what's out there

beyond the boundaries,

was definitely a dream.

- [Tim] Okay, I'm coming out.

- [Tim Kopra] Okay.

[Reid Wiseman] Hey, Tim, it's really cool

seeing that Union Jack go outside,

since it's explored all over the world,

now it's explored space.

[Tim] It's great to be wearing it.

A huge privilege.

A proud moment.

[man] Gentlemen, looking great.

Glad to see you both out there together

on the tip of the world.

[Tim] We thought it very important

to include our children

in everything that was going on,

so they felt very much

a part of that process.

[boy] Hello, Daddy.

They were there in Kazakhstan

on launch day.

[reporter] Tim's wife, Rebecca, beaming

with pride. Not a trace of nerves.

Will you ever be able to look

at the stars in the same way again?

It'll give us something extra

to look at, that's for sure,

now that we know Daddy's up there,

so, yeah,

we'll have something else to look out

for in the night sky, so it'll be great.

[Tim] I got to see them just before

getting onto the bus as well,

to the launch pad.

By the time you actually say goodbye

to your family and go to the launch pad,

there's a moment there

where you realize,

"Okay, this is happening now."

And for me, it was a real flick

of a switch in terms of mental focus.

Ten, nine, eight…

[Tim] You realize,

"This is it for six months.

Get into the right frame of mind,

because what you're going to do

is quite remarkable."

One!

Hey!

Bye, Daddy! Bye!

[Tim] Nothing can really prepare you

for that feeling of weightlessness

and how to move your body around.

You feel very clumsy at first.

Your arms and legs are not moving

how you would expect them to,

and you have to use your muscles

in a different way to control yourself.

This could be the worst idea

I've ever had.

- [laughs]

- Come on. You can do better than that.

Okay, so, yeah, I'll just go into a ball

and start spinning,

and then if you wanna

just keep me going round, and…

- Shall I keep you on axis too?

- Yeah, yeah. On axis, that's cool.

Let's go for it. That's good.

That's really fast from my point of view,

but it's not making me feel sick.

The space station is, first

and foremost, a scientific laboratory.

When you change gravity,

you get some quite remarkable results

in many of the experiments

that we're doing.

If you think that all life on Earth

has evolved over billions of years

in a one-G environment,

put them into weightlessness,

we know straightaway

that the human body changes remarkably

just in the first five weeks in space.

Our immune system changes,

our cardiovascular system changes,

our blood volume changes, our skin ages

differently, our eyesight changes.

And that just goes to show

what gravity is doing here on Earth

and what happens when you remove it.

Okay, I'll see if I can…

I'm feeling dizzy.

I'll see how quickly it stops.

So definitely felt dizzy initially,

and now it's gone.

- No. It's that quick?

- Yeah. Yeah, completely normal.

- Amazing.

- Yeah.

[man] Crazy.

[Tim] I was very lucky to have

the opportunity to go on a spacewalk.

Myself and Tim Kopra, my NASA crewmate.

We had to go and repair

one of the solar panels.

It was quite an important task

to get the full power back

up and running to the space station.

[commentator] Tim Peake

now being moved

by Scott Kelly on the left,

Sergei Volkov on the right,

into the crew-lock section of Quest.

[Tim] When you first go into the airlock,

you're in there

with so much other equipment.

Everything is making an awful noise.

I mean, we have a lot of metal

on our spacesuits,

so lots of clips, lots of karabiners,

tethers which are gonna

keep things attached.

Everything is clunking around,

making a racket.

As the airlock starts to depressurize

and we go to vacuum,

you notice a lot of that noise

starting to disappear.

We still hear things because they're

being transmitted through our spacesuit,

but, for example, you can get

two metal clips in front of your helmet

and knock them together

and then you won't hear anything at all.

The noise that you have

is just a gentle hum of a fan

blowing air over the back of our heads

through our helmets.

Dropping out of the airlock

and just seeing Earth beneath my feet

for the first time was wonderful.

It's a very calm environment,

a very serene environment.

It's not like a high-adrenaline,

extreme sport.

It's one that's just of awe.

♪ Hanging around

On the edge of the world ♪

♪ Finally no one around ♪

[Tim] I think spacewalking is probably

the highest risk activity that we do,

and it's actually

physically demanding as well.

It looks very graceful

when you see astronauts out there,

but inside the suit,

we're working very, very hard

with moving your fingers and your arms

against the pressure

of a pressurized suit.

♪ Solid ground ♪

One thing that was strange for me

as a pilot

is that in all my years of flying,

of course, if there's an emergency,

one of the first things

you're thinking about is landing.

Where am I gonna land?

How am I going to land?

In space, that's not gonna happen.

You're up there for good.

♪ Solid ground ♪

[Josh] Our planet

is just a little blue marble

floating in the black void of space.

I make little planets that perhaps

remind one of how small our own Earth is

in relation to the greater universe.

Some kind of a star-base there.

And sometimes just cities.

People actually give us a hard time

because he makes glass planets

and I like to go look for planets.

They seem to like it up here.

[Jamey] Hey, Mom, I made cookies.

[Josh] Jamey made cookies

two nights in a row.

[Cady] Oh, I miss you, sweetie-pie.

I love you guys a lot. I miss you.

[Jamey] Love you too.

I love you. I miss you.

- [Josh] All right, bye, sweetie.

- [Cady] Bye.

We could not call Cady,

but she called us.

I think she called us

every single night she was in orbit

except the night before she came back.

It was amazing to have her call us.

We'd talk for a few minutes and then

we'd go back, if it was a clear night,

we'd walk out onto the back porch

and watch her just blaze across the sky.

[Jamey] She would read me,

like, bedtime stories,

or I would just sort of talk to her

in my room about my day, you know.

It was definitely really tough

to not be able to talk in the same way,

and that whenever I needed something,

I would call my mom and be, like,

"Mom, I can't find my pants.

Where are my pants?"

But now that she was on the station,

it was, like, "Sweetie,

I don't know where your pants are,

because I haven't been there

for four months," you know.

People ask me, you know, like,

"What is it like to have your mom

as an astronaut?"

And I'll be, like,

"Well, I mean, it's just Mom."

[Cady] I look out at the stars

and I see so many stars and planets

and know that, you know,

we have a place in the universe,

and it's our job to explore that place.

We need to bring up our children

to recognize and celebrate

the differences among us

and realize that it is

bringing those differences to a team

that allows us to pursue and succeed

in large endeavors,

like having it become normal

that somebody's mom

lives on the space station.

["In The Wee Small Hours

Of The Morning" playing]

♪ In the wee small hours of the morning ♪

♪ While the whole wide world

Is fast asleep ♪

It's very interesting

when you overfly places

that you have a strong connection to.

You are high enough that you can embrace

with one look an entire country.

Like Italy, you can easily see

the whole of it.

Everybody that I know

that I love that lives in there,

I can kind of see them all.

We are flying around the Earth

once every 90 minutes.

Every orbit

is like this embrace of the planet.

There is no one place on the planet

that feels far away.

Everything feels very close,

like your backyard.

♪ In the wee small hours of the morning ♪

♪ That's the time… ♪

[Samantha] Even the strange situation

of thinking that, you know,

there's billions of people on the planet,

and there's only six right now

that are not, you know,

confined to the surface,

and it happens to be the six of us.

I think by the end what I had

was a feeling of affection

for the planet as a whole.

It almost makes you feel like

the sentinels that are guarding the Earth,

especially when you fly over it

at night, right?

You almost think, like,

people down there,

you're looking over them

as they're sleeping.

You get that feeling of,

"Oh, gosh, you know, it's my planet,

I want to protect it."

♪ In the wee small hours of the morning ♪

♪ That's the time you miss her ♪

♪ Most of all ♪

[Peggy] One of the best parts

of being able

to look at Earth from space

is perspective.

Because you see that planet,

you see how valuable it is,

how tiny-thin that atmosphere is,

and that's where all of the humanity

that we know about, anyway, lives on.

And then you look out to the stars

and you see thousands and thousands

and thousands of stars,

and recognize

that we are just one galaxy

and that there are

billions of galaxies out there

that have maybe even more stars than us.

It makes me sure

that there is other life out there.

It may not look like us, or, you know,

be like us in any form or fashion,

but there's going to be life out there.

There's just too many choices,

too many chances to be had.

I think what history will say

about the space station is going to be

that it was the first real demonstration

of international cooperation.

We put together pieces

that had never been put together,

we did it in low-Earth orbit,

going 17,500 miles an hour,

and that technical cooperation

overcomes differences

in culture, in religions or beliefs.

We overcame all of that

and came together

to build something really special.

I think one of the most memorable times

on the spacewalk,

I was doing a baseband

signal processor change-out.

I pulled the box out, and the back side

of the container that housed the box

was this mirror reflective substance,

and I saw myself in a spacesuit

with the Earth behind me.

I was, like, "Hey, I'm an astronaut.

The real thing!"

Not bad for a girl from Iowa.

I would go back to space in a heartbeat.

I met my radiation limits with NASA,

so I'll have to find somebody else

that'll fly me.

[chuckles]

[Scott] Seeing the Earth from space,

and seeing the planet

without political borders,

you get an enhanced sense

that we are all in this thing

that we call humanity together.

You know, we're all part

of the same team, Team Earth.

One of the first times I looked at

the Earth I was, like, kind of puzzled.

I was like, "Hey, what's that thin film

over the surface?"

And then you quickly realize,

that's our atmosphere.

When you look down on the planet,

our atmosphere looks like a contact lens

over somebody's eyeball,

like this very, very fragile thing.

And then you see

how certain parts of the Earth

are almost always covered in pollution.

Noticeable changes in the rainforest.

I mean, it really makes you, you know,

wanna take care of the planet.

We're all not going to Mars.

Mars is not the place that we go

after we destroy this planet.

That's not gonna work.

This was built

by an international partnership.

Fifteen different countries,

different languages, different cultures,

different technical ways

of doing things.

This is like the hardest thing

we've ever done.

Maybe harder than going to the Moon.

That alone proves

that if we have a dream,

if we have a goal,

if we work together, work as a team,

we can accomplish amazing things.

[man speaks in Russian]

[applause]

[Sergei in Russian]

Space exploration is important

because it's a way to expand our world.

The fact that we've now learned

to go higher than the atmosphere

is probably a step as crucial

as learning to cross the sea.

[man] The crew requests permission

to come aboard.

[man 2] Endeavour, permission granted.

[Sergei in Russian] Sooner or later,

we must find some settlements

on the Moon,

then maybe on Mars's satellites,

on Mars itself,

so these are the first steps to making

our civilization multi-planetary.

We do realize

we've just started on this path

and maybe walking it is slower

than sci-fi writers thought

30 or 40 years ago,

but we still have to take steps now

to finally arrive

where our destiny lies.

[Bill] To us, their less tried successors,

they appear magnified,

pushing out into the unknown

in obedience to an inward voice,

to an impulse beating in the blood,

to a dream of the future.

They were wonderful,

and it must be owned,

they were ready for the wonderful.

[woman] Parameters of the launch vehicle

are normal.

[woman 2] Okay, copy. Everything is normal

on board. 150 seconds.

[woman 3] Have you loud and clear.

Everything is normal on board.

Further inaudible.

[woman 4] This is 19. Solovia.

Yes, I have you loud and clear.

Everything's good on our side.

Congratulations.

["Solid Ground" playing]

♪ How does it feel

When it's quiet and calm? ♪

♪ And will I be denied? ♪

♪ How will it feel

When it's time to move on? ♪

♪ Mother says kneel and pray ♪

♪ When it gets hard

I will roll those sleeves ♪

♪ Life can be so unkind ♪

♪ I will be found

On the edge of the world ♪

♪ Where there'll be no one around ♪

♪ Oh, solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪

♪ Solid ground ♪