| Basic Training Report, February 2000
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The topics of this month are training in Europe and EVA training conduced
at Tsukuba Space Center.
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Training at the European Space Agency |
The Japanese ASCANs received lectures for about a week at the European
Space Agency (ESA), together with two ESA ASCANs. The purpose of the training
was to familiarize the ASCANs with ESA, ESA's participation and contribution
to the ISS Program, and Columbus Module and experiment racks.
They received a familiarization lecture on ESA at the European Astronauts
Center (EAC) in Germany and took a facility tour of their training facilities.
They also had lectures on the outline of the Columbus module (COF) and
experiment racks that are being developed by ESA for the ISS. At the European
Space Technology Center (ESTEC) they took a look at the facility for satellite
testing and assembly, and received lectures on ESA's ISS utilization concept.
After they finished the training in Europe, they received a certificate
from ESA.
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lecture at EAC
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Columbus trainer (ESTEC)
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Receiving training certificate
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Extravehicular Activities (EVA) training |
After returning from Europe, the ASCAN's participated in EVA training in
the weightless environment test building at Tsukuba Space Center. This
facility is equipped with a 16m-diameter, and 10.5m-depth water pool that
simulates a microgravity environment by utilizing buoyancy. The training
purpose was to acquire basic skills necessary for EVAs for ISS and equipment
exchange activities conducted on the Exposed Facility of the Japanese Experiment
Module, Kibo.
The ASCANs had lectures on the history of EVA, space suits, EVA tools,
the microgravity environment test facility, diving physiology and summary
of underwater space suits last year. During this training, they entered
the water in space suits and performed translation, EVA tools operation,
PFR* ingress and egress, and part of the EVA activities needed for the
assembly of Kibo. Japanese astronauts Mr. Doi and Mr. Noguchi, who happened
to be visiting Japan, watched this training and gave advice to the ASCANs.
This training is conducted in underwater space suits simulating the conditions
of space.It is difficult to move in the space suits during this training,
which continues up to three hours. During EVA, astronauts need to move
by their hands using hand rails attached to the ISS. Since this was their
first EVA training, even translation seemed to be very hard at the beginning,
but they quickly learned how to move underwater in the space suits and
were soon performing smoothly.
*PFRFPortable Foot Restraint
The next basic training report will be issued in early April.
Last Updated : March 23, 2000
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