Preflight Interview: Chris Hadfield

The STS-100 Crew Interviews with Chris Hadfield, Mission Specialist.

Q: Tell me a little bit about your career with the Canadian Space Agency and here at NASA.

A: Canada has only recruited astronauts twice, ever. There was one class in '83, and then in January of '92, they stuck an ad in the newspapers. "Wanted: Astronauts Coast-to-Coast." And so, there were a little over 5,000 of us put in our resumes. And, they slowly interviewed and whittled it down until finally they just chose four of us. And so, I was hired in the spring of '92. And the four of us went into basic astronaut training with the Canadian Space Agency. And then, I immediately got detailed to come down and start Mission Specialist training, along with Marc Garneau at the time, the two of us began Mission Specialist training at the Johnson Space Center in summer of '92. So, that's how I got here. And then, since then, I've had a chance to do several jobs with NASA and for the CSA working at the Cape; working in support of flights and safety; working in Mission Control as a CAPCOM; and flying in space on the way to Mir.

Being an astronaut's a very special thing. Were there any particular people who were an influence on you that helped you get where you are?

My philosophy has always been to try and take away a little bit from everyone that I meet. Because everyone does something better than I do. You just have to find out what. But of course, there are some people that do pretty much everything better than I do. And those are people you can really model yourself after. Growing up, I looked at the people that did the things that I wanted to do. The aviation pioneers, someone with the guts of Lindbergh to be brave enough to set a…maybe young enough to set out alone across the Atlantic for the first time. And those first three guys that went to the moon with the actual purpose of walking there. I know people had gone to the moon previously. But, really in the mind's eye of a 9-year-old, it was those first two guys that walked on the moon that really became superhuman in my eyes. And then, it was really focused for me by the book that the third member of that crew, Michael Collins, wrote. Carrying the Fire. I've read that book several times; and to me it really crystallized what it was that I wanted to do when I grew up.

Let's talk about this flight. What are the goals of STS-100? What's the significance of the new robot arm you and your crewmates are taking to the International Space Station?

Yes, I'm flying on STS-100. Nice, round number. The purpose of our flight is to put the arm on the space station. That's the big robot arm that is then going to build the rest of station. The arm on the shuttle isn't long enough to reach the whole space station. And so, you need the capability to be able to reach down into the payload bay of the shuttle, pick out a big, new piece of the station, then trundle the whole length of the station and install it somewhere else. And the station's now getting big enough that it's time to bring up the arm. And that's the purpose of our flight. The primary purpose is to bring up this huge, new robotic arm, unfold it, bolt it together, hook up the wiring, and bring it to life so that it becomes a permanent part of the space station. We're also bringing up other pieces. We're bringing up an electronics antenna-a UHF antenna. We're bringing up an Italian logistics module, which is just really a huge carryall for equipment and experiments and supplies for the space station crew. So, we'll attach that and they'll unload all the good, new stuff and then put in their garbage, and we'll put it back in the bay and bring it home. But, really the key focus of STS-100 is installing the arm.

Now, you're installing this arm. Why is that so crucial? Why do you have to do this? How does this affect the rest of the assembly sequence of the station?

We are on STS-100, also called Space Station Assembly Flight Number 6A - "A" for American - so 6A. And, up until now, it's been possible to build the station using a combination of flying the vehicles together, of going outside by hand and putting things together, or of using the robot arm on the shuttle to grab things and attach them to the station. But now, the station has gotten to the size that you can no longer reach all over with just those three tools. And, in fact the very next flight after us - we're 6A; 7A, the flight after ours - cannot be done with those three tools. You need to have the extra flexibility and the extra reach of this big, new robotic arm that we're taking up just to make 7A possible at all. So, we are very much like the flights before us and the looks to follow, in the critical path to building space station. And the biceps of the rest of the station program that are going to put it together rest on the arm that we're bringing up.

Before you install this impressive piece of hardware, you have to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station. Tell me about that. And, tell me also what you'll be doing during the rendezvous and docking.

Space station control, which way a space station points, goes through space, is not arbitrary. You have to choose. It's a real tradeoff. You need to think about [where] your antennas point for communications. You need to think about where the sun is, so that one side of the station doesn't get wickedly hot and the other side too cold. you need to think about preserving a beautiful zero-g atmosphere inside, so that all the experiments can succeed. All those things are traded off. By the time we get to the station, it's big enough that it always points the same way. Almost like a ship. And, the Laboratory is the prow of that ship. So, for us to dock, we are actually going to come from below and behind, come right out in front of the space station, and then slowly back up and dock with them, with the bow of the space station. Right on the front of the United States Laboratory. It's exactly the same as the flight before us. And, really it's how the shuttles will dock from now on. But, it sure hasn't been how they've docked up until now. They've attacked it from several different directions as it got bigger. My part during the rendezvous and the docking is as part of a subset of our crew that's responsible for that phase of flight. We of course have the Commander doing the flying and the Pilot helping him out then. And then, two of us who had a chance to go to Mir beforehand-myself and Scott Parazynski-will be running all of the systems that let the Commander know what he needs to know. Firing a handheld laser up the top so we can measure distance. Running the other lasers and distance-measuring equipment. Running a computer that keeps track of all that for us. And actually running the mechanism so that when the two stations slam together, or the station and the shuttle slam together, the big Russian-built mechanism that will lock them in place and then pull them tight, so we get a nice pressure seal, we'll be running that system as well.

After you dock with the International Space Station, what happens? What happens in those hours right after that?

Well, we have some important stuff on board that we want to give to the crew on space station. But, we're getting ready for space walks on the shuttle. And so, we've got the pressure dropped down in the shuttle. We're only down about two-thirds of a normal atmosphere in the shuttle. The station's up at sea-level pressure. So, you can't just open the hatch or the air would come rushing into the shuttle. And we want the air down nice and low, getting ready for the space walks. So, we use the little mating adapter, about the size of a very small car, in between the two spaceships as a kind of a postbox, a mailbox. And, we are going to open our half of it, put a bunch of gear in there including checklists and important supplies and probably some bags of water because the shuttle creates extra water as we fly, and then we'll close our side of it. And then the station will open a little valve and have some air come in, equalize that little volume up to their pressure, then they'll open the hatch and then like someone in a remote outpost getting mail, they will pull all that stuff in and close the hatch again. So, we'll do that right at the end of rendezvous day, kind of stage some key equipment through to the space station crew through this little Pressurized Mating Adapter airlock.

You are sending across these very important things. Anything special you're going to be sending to the Expedition Two crew? You're going to be the first folks to see them.

Yes. We will be their first visitors. I had a similar experience last time in that I visited a crew living on board Mir. Two Russians and a German. And we were their only visitors in six months. And, we very much tried to be good guests. Just like if you went to someone who lived in a cottage somewhere and you're just coming up for the weekend when they're there for the whole summer; you try and be not too big a ripple in their normal life. But, you also try and make it a positive experience. So, we have a lot of course key operational things to do. Install the arm, transfer equipment, bring them up food and clothing and experiments. And, we're bringing up, of course, huge racks that will be installed in the Laboratory. A lot of key equipment for the Space Station Program and for their professional side of their lives. But, at the same time we are guests in their home for about a week. And so, we want to be good guests as well. We'll bring them gifts. And, we'll bring them probably a little variety in their diet. Some other food. And, try and bring them news and letters from home and add a little fun to their lives as well in what for them can be a very monastic existence of six months in space.

The day after docking, the shuttle's robot arm is going to be used to install a robot arm on the space station. We mentioned that before. And the first space walk of the flight begins. You are very involved in the space walk.

Yes.

Talk me through what's going to happen on that day and describe what you'll be doing.

We launch with a new space station arm back in the payload bay of the shuttle. And, it's in a cradle, a big pallet. The arm's too big just to lay in the shuttle. It has to be folded in half and then folded in half again, like a dead spider with its legs all folded up on itself. And we are going to use the shuttle arm to pick that up and attach it to the station. But then, it's still just dead and folded on to the station. And that's where the space walk comes in. Myself and Scott Parazynski, we're going to go outside and hook up electrical wiring to that arm so that it starts to heat up and warm up and bring its computers to life. And then, we will undo the huge bolts that held it in place to take all the vibration and acceleration during launch. And then, once it is powered and unbolted, we will actually unfold the big arms and bolt them together, sticking in these expandable fasteners. And, out we'll space walk, with our huge power tool, we will drive these to bring that arm to a stiff state, to have its arm unfolded and built. So that, now, it is in a posture where it is powered and it is stiff enough that it can then come to life and start to raise itself and be ready to walk off on its own. That's the primary purpose of the space walk. We are also going to take the UHF antenna off of that pallet, take it around to the other side of the station with me riding on the end of the shuttle arm, flying this thing like a huge Robin Hood-type lance out in front of me, and then install that on the other side of the station. And that will allow space-to-space communications between the station and the shuttle and space walking astronauts as well. And then, we'll clean it all up, bring in all of the covers we've taken off like a huge load of laundry, and put that back. In total hopefully we'll be outside six and a half, maybe seven hours.

What is this new arm capable of at the end of the space walk? Is it ready to go at that point?

When we launch, the arm is inside this cradle. And the big difference between the station arm and the shuttle arm is that it has basically a hand at each end. The shuttle arm is very much like my own arm, with a shoulder, an elbow, a wrist, and then something to grab. When the people designed the shuttle arm, they just looked at their own arm and thought, "This is a good design," and basically mechanized that. Well, the station is big enough that if you always fix the shoulder at one place, you really limit yourself. So, they wanted to give it the capability to be able to grab somewhere and then grab somewhere else with the other end of the arm, and then walk around. If you could picture your own arm with a hand on each end. And, that's a simplification. But, that's how the arm is basically. Well, when it's launched in this cradle, of course both of its hands are locked on to little mechanisms inside the cradle. At the end of the first space walk, we've given it life and it will let go with one of its hands and be capable of reaching around and grabbing the space station, but it's still powered and attached to this launch cradle, this Spacelab Pallet. And so, even though it will be alive and a functioning arm, it will not be in its final position and its power will be in the, through the wrong end of it basically until we have a chance to go out a second time and make things more permanent.

You mentioned the UHF antenna. What sort of additional communications are going to be possible after that's hooked up?

The space station capability to communicate evolves over time. Of course, the bigger the station is, the more things there are in the way of your antenna. Like trying to put up an antenna on your house if you're surrounded by apartment buildings. The station gets bigger and bigger, has arrays sticking up and radiators. And so, you constantly have to change the way its communications antennas are arranged. And this is adding to that capability. It has the capability to communicate through several different wavelengths and several different types of antennas: S-band and Ku-band. And, this will be a UHF antenna with the same frequencies that military airplanes talk on. And, in fact some taxi companies talk on…but UHF frequencies. And by having that it will give it the capability for the crew on board the space station and on board the space shuttle and outside doing space walks to all talk to each other at once using these antenna. It will also, while we're coming in to dock, give the capability for us to send a signal through this antenna to the space station to give it commands if we needed to run its docking mechanism or its attitude control system or one of those things. So, it is a further development in the communications capability of the space station.

The next day, the Multi-purpose Logistics Module is lifted up out of the shuttle's cargo bay and attached to the space station. What is this Logistics Module? You told us a little bit about it earlier. But, tell us some more about that. And what are you bringing up on the flight?

When the Russians flew to Mir, everything was carried through a hatch that is in the middle of the docking ring. The hatch is only about 3 feet across. Well, the space station has some pretty big sections inside the Laboratory racks and they're the size of a refrigerator, each one of those racks. And, you can't put a refrigerator through a 3-foot hole. So, in order to resupply space station we needed bigger hatches. Bigger than the shuttle can provide. And so, the best way to do that is to design a container, like a big U-Haul trailer or a huge suitcase that has a great, big hatch at one end. And, you can then fill that on the ground with everything that you need, reach out with the shuttle arm, pick it up, and attach it to the space station. And then, once you've opened the hatch, it's like a moving van just pulled up. And, you can just even though you're weightless - which makes it a lot less muscular - but delicately detach the hatches inside of the module and then float them through into the station and then attach them inside the Laboratory. And, that's why we have a Logistics Module, why we don't just drag things through the hatches that exist already. This module was built by the Italians up in the north of Italy. And, we're lucky enough to have an Italian on board as well, so it's great for him and for the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency that Umberto is on board. And he's our expert on the MPLM. But really it's just a very exquisitely designed container to bring these things up so that we can resupply the space station with large, practical, and easily fitting items.

What's the process of getting this Logistics Module attached to the station? How does that happen?

When we launch, we have two things in the payload bay of the shuttle. In the front is the big, new station arm and its pallet. In the back is this big Logistics Module, or the big MPLM. And each of them will be lifted at separate times by the shuttle arm, which will grab them, lift them up, and attach them to station. The cradle with the arm in it, we'll put on the front side of the station or the topside of the station. And, we'll also, on a subsequent day, as you say, reach back and pick up this Logistics Module-this big cylinder it weighs 10 tons or so-pick it up and attach it to the underside of the station on to the Node. And, you don't really attach it with the arm. The arm is just a positioning tool. Pick it up, bring it around, and put it very close to the Node side of the space station and then it's the Common Berthing Mechanism, with its latches and grabbers and hooks, that will pull the two together and give us a nice pressure seal and lock this Logistics Module to the station. And then, the job is done. It can let go and then it's a matter of equalizing pressure, opening up the hatch turning on the lights, and unloading the MPLM.

You and Scott Parazynski go outside for a second space walk. Talk to me about that space walk and explain exactly what you'll be doing out there.

The purpose of space walk number one was to install the arm. The purpose of space walk number two is to permanently power the arm. The arm launched held inside its cradle, and it's powered through the end that is still in the cradle. But once it reaches around [and] grabs on to the Laboratory, like a huge inchworm with one end on each side, well then it's necessary to release all the power from the pallet side and actually go out and rewire it so that now the power's coming through the Laboratory side so that the arm is now powered from the correct end so we can bring that pallet home. We don't want to leave the pallet up there. It's just a container. So, on the second space walk, Scott's main job is to actually open up a whole panel, like an electrician taking part of your wall down, open up a big panel and then get in there with his hands and break a whole bunch of connections that were there temporarily and make a bunch of connections that are there to permanently power it through the grapple fixture and mechanism that's on the Laboratory end of the arm. Meanwhile, I will go and disconnect the wires on the other side of the Lab - the ones that are now no longer needed - so that we can bring that pallet home. I will also go and bring back an antenna that has been on the station for a few years now that is no longer needed now that we're increasing its communications capability. But also, that would be in the way for the subsequent flight. You have to get this antenna out of the way so that we can then install the airlock on the flight after ours; on assembly flight 7A. So, Scott's doing the wiring. I'm bringing back an antenna. I'll disconnect some wires that we don't need anymore. And then, finally, one more thing on the space walk number two. And that is the installation of a big, spare computer of sorts. It's really a switching unit - a DCSU. It's mounted on the wall of the payload bay of the shuttle. It's on a little heating blanket and connector so that it stays warm. And Scott's going to come down and hold on to it and disconnect it with his big power tool-the Pistol-Grip Tool-and then be flown up on the arm and then put it in place on a platform that's on the side of the Laboratory - the external stowage platform. And, I'll go around and help guide it into place with Scott. And, between the two of us, we'll get it clicked down and bolted down into place and hook up its little wire just to keep it warm. But, it's not to be used right away. It's just there as an on-orbit spare so that if the one they're using breaks which is important for the power distribution on the space station, they can go and remove the one that's broken and grab this one that we've brought up. Just like keeping a hardware store on orbit. You can make them go to the parts supply that's on the side of the station and install this new DC Switching Unit, so they can stay in business without having to wait for a whole shuttle to come up.

After that second space walk, is there any more work going on with the shuttle and station robot arms?

The arm that we're bringing up to the space station has been tested for years and years in simulation and on the ground in Canada and in Florida. And, oh, in fact, in Huntsville as well; a big shake test. Everything. Trying to make sure that that arm works properly. But, you don't really know until you go do it for real. And, we have to use this arm on the flight after ours to assemble the space station. It has to be a trusted, proven piece of hardware by 7A, by the flight after ours. So, they really want to take advantage of the fact that the shuttle's there to do some testing of that arm. To make sure that it behaves the way that our simulators predict. And, if you think about it, first the arm just reaches out on its own. So, it, just like any new piece of hardware, you want to move it each direction and shake it a little bit and see that it behaves the way you think. But then, once it grabs the Laboratory and it's swinging around with the cradle that brought it up on the other end, this cradle weighs 3,000 pounds. And so, here is a nice, big, heavy mass on the end of the arm. And so, you can do all these tests again-shaking it and moving quickly and stopping and making sure that all the math was right-because that'll be the last time we have a chance to move something heavy around until the airlock shows up on 7A, when it really has to work properly. So, there's a lot of checkout of the new station arm - the "big arm," as they call it around the station - before we leave. Both with the arm moving on its own and with the mass on the end, what we call the dynamic checkout of the arm, to make sure that it's fully proven in time for the next flight.

The schedule I saw for your flight had a tentative third space walk in there. Is there an actual tentative third space walk? Is that going to happen?

We have built our mission plan a little bit pessimistically, and I think it's the right thing to do. This is a real new realm of space robotics. And we don't know for sure that everything's going to work. We're pretty sure. And we hope it's going to. But if everything was easy then it wouldn't take nearly so much practice. And so, we've built a third space walk into the flight. But there's nothing on it. However, if something does crop up - and it could easily happen; there's a lot of dominoes in a row that if one of them doesn't fall properly then you're delayed until you get some, a lot of time-consuming work done - we have a third space walk available. And that sounds kind of, I guess, arbitrary. But, really it isn't. Because you have to be able to depressurize and repressurize the airlock. You have to have the air-purification equipment for the space suits. You have to have the time and the crew available. All of those things need to be planned in advance because, if you just suddenly cropped up that "Hey, we need to do another space walk," you may not have enough nitrogen or oxygen on board to be able to do those things. So, we've built the plan as if there's a third space walk so that we have all of the raw materials necessary. And then, if it comes along and we get everything done and everything goes great - touch wood - get everything done properly, then we won't need that third space walk and we can use that day for transfer and for extra arm checkout and things like that. But, if we have to do it, we're ready.

So, that's what you'll do on that day if you don't need the space walk? Just more exchanging of materials back and forth?

Yes. If we don't need to do the third space walk, it gives us basically one day to catch up on things that we're behind on. Also, to do extra checkout of the new station arm. Assuming that, because we didn't need the space walk, that means the arm's working. And so, it gives the station crew a day to practice all of the techniques and the moves and the computing equipment that they're going to have to run to move the arm during the flight after ours. Having a shuttle there in exactly the same position, they can fly the station arm down and go to the exact position and make sure that the vision system is computing properly and all of those things work right so that it's sort of like a simulator for them. So, when they get to do it real six weeks or two months later, they'll have had a good chance to practice it with the real hardware and feel a lot more confident about what they're going to do. That's what we'll do on the day that we're not doing that third space walk if we don't have to.

The day before undocking, the Logistics Module has to be returned to the shuttle payload bay. How does that happen and what other work needs to happen before you do undock with the station?

We have a lot of equipment to transfer out of the inside of that big, silver cylinder, the Logistics Module. And even once we have it all empty, of course, then a lot of unused equipment, dirty clothes, everything that's left on the station that they don't need can be put back into that Logistics Module and brought home. And once all of that transfer is complete, then, of course, you close up the hatches between the two and grab back on to it with the shuttle arm, and then run the Berthing Mechanism in reverse so that it releases the pallet, and then very delicately - it'll be Scott Parazynski flying the arm for that - put it back into the bay so that we can bring it home. So, that's an important step. We also have to bring up or take the cradle that brought up the station arm. We have to grab it, release it from the station to put it back in the bay, and that's my job. Once we have those two empty containers back in the bay and we've completed our space walks and we've transferred everything on the inside that's pretty much it. And then, we'll be ready to undock and come home.

So, there's nothing left to do before you say goodbye to the Expedition Two crew at that point.

Well, hopefully there won't be anything else left to do by that. We're also transferring several items that are stowed on the middeck of the shuttle. Some of them are key experiments that have to be powered constantly in order for what's inside them to stay alive. When the Logistics Module in the back of the bay flies, it's unpowered. It's just a big suitcase. And so, you can't take something in it that would die without electricity, that would overheat or freeze or whatever, like a refrigerator. So, any experiment like that has to actually be carried downstairs in the shuttle in the middeck, and we have a few experiments like that, that are powered transfers. And so, before we undock from the space station, we will have to transfer those, unplug them quickly in the shuttle and then transfer them to the station, and then plug them back in again. And, we have a few of those to transfer as well. As well several bags-10, maybe 12 bags-of water, of distilled water, that the shuttle creates with its fuel cells; we'll transfer those across. But once that's all done, it'll be time to, we'll be running out of oxygen and nitrogen. They'll probably have had enough of us. It'll be time to zip up and come home.

Once you've said goodbye to those guys you will obviously undock at that point. Talk me through that process and tell me what you'll be doing during the undocking as you move away from the space station.

The space station, the bigger it gets really the more fragile it is. It's a huge selection of appendages, all just attached at one point. Big solar arrays sticking out. Radiators sticking out. In fact, there's one radiator [that] sticks out right down over the nose of the shuttle. So, you can imagine if we fire the thrusters on the shuttle what effect it has on that radiator out there. You have to be very careful of every little puff of thrusting from those forward thrusters on the shuttle that let the shuttle steer. So, as we undock -and we will actually be moving through space, with our nose up, our tail down, and belly into the wind in the shuttle - as we undock from the station the springs of the mechanism push us away a little bit. And, as we start to drift away, you very delicately fire those thrusters so that you don't cause some big motion of the space station. It's a real…really careful and methodical and accurately simulated sequence that we go through to move our self as gently and gracefully away from the station as we can. And then, we stop at a distance - about 450 feet - that we can fire those thrusters and the thrusting will have spread over enough of an area that it won't really hurt the station if we fire our thrusters all the way out there. And, we'll fly around the station once. Because you want to keep track of the evolution of the outside of the station over the years. Any damage, any items that have come loose, any micrometeorite hits, any paint that is flaking. All those things. You want to know how those are developing over time so that the next crews coming up can fix them as required. But also, we have an IMAX camera on board, both one inside and one outside in the payload bay. Like a big cannon in the back that is permanently staring up at the space station. And we really want to, during our fly around, as the space station comes through the horizon in our field of view, we want to turn on that IMAX camera and film the space station as it exists when we're there coming through the horizon. We're trying to set ourselves up so that the IMAX people get that shot. And, it takes some careful flying of the shuttle to get far enough away, to get us turned and lined up just right. And Jeff Ashby will be flying the shuttle at that time. Myself and Scott will be helping with all the equipment to give him the information he needs. And the Commander will be working in an assistant role to Jeff in flying the vehicle. And, we're going to try to get it in just the right spot-assuming we still have enough fuel-that we can do all this delicate flying. Get that shot, come around underneath the station, and then fire our thrusters to move away and leave it there, ready for the next crew.

You mentioned earlier your experiences on Russia's Mir space station. Now, once you enter the International Space Station, how do you think it's going to compare with what you saw on board Mir?

Mir was an amazing accomplishment. It was the world's first great space station. The first outpost away from Earth. It's very much a child of the Cold War; but it developed in the later years of its life into becoming a real place, a real crucible for international space operations. And we learned so much from going to Mir of how to operate the shuttle, how to operate a space station, and how to work as an international crew going there. And I was lucky enough to be one of those crews that had a chance to go. The new space station is like any new home that's built after having lived in an old home for a while. You learn what you like and what you don't like. What you need more of and what you need less of. The new space station has a lot more electricity, so it'll be brighter. Mir was the first of its type. And it's a real tradeoff. And solar arrays are hard to take up and hard to unfold. And so, Mir was always short of electricity. So I expect the new space station will be brighter lit. It's also bigger around because the rockets that took the pieces of Mir up are of a different design than the payload bay of the shuttle. So, the living quarters on the International Space Station have a bigger diameter than Mir. So, it'll be a roomier place. And it's also newer. So, it's like the difference between an old car and a new car. It'll still have that new space station smell, I think, when we get up there. But I think the lessons that we learned from having helped build Mir - because I actually helped to build one section of Mir on my last flight - and from having worked with the crews that were resident on Mir, I think have really helped prepare us to understand what's involved in building and living permanently on a space station such as ISS.

In this mission, you're taking up the robot arm. It's a Canadian piece of hardware. And, you'll be the first Canadian to conduct a space walk. What do you think about the role of Canada in the development of space? And is Canadian pride in any way tied to space?

Canada's been in space almost as long as the United States and Russia have. In fact, we were the third nation in history to have a satellite in space. Third, after those two. Canada has been involved in robotics right from the start of the Shuttle Program, of course. We were asked by the United States and by NASA to provide the big arm-the big Canadarm, as we call it-on the space shuttle. And, it has become a symbol, with Canada written on the side of it and a maple leaf, it has become very much a symbol of technological success for Canada. The arm on the shuttle. It's flown over 50 times. It's been extremely successful. It's helped greatly in the repair of the Hubble telescope and all of the maintenance flights of going to Mir, of moving astronauts around. It's been an extremely successful piece of hardware. And Canadians take a lot of pride in that - in the fact that it's also a visual symbol. It's in commercials in Canada all the time because of what it's been capable of doing. And so, all that has been building over time of our capability in space. Our initial participation, our early satellites, our communications satellites, the early Canadian astronauts, the arm on the shuttle. And now working towards the point where we are trusted and, in fact, relied upon to provide the robotics for the International Space Station. You can't build a space station without the Canadarm. So, Canadians take pride in that. And I'm extremely proud, as a Canadian, to be the person that's trusted to go up and put this thing together. I've been working on it for 5 years. I've been assigned to this flight for 5 years. And doing my absolute best to make sure that we haven't missed anything, that there's no rock left unturned, to make sure that, for me on behalf of all the other Canadians that have worked on it and all the Canadians that are expecting it to work, that when we do plug this arm in and take the bolts out, that it'll work as advertised.

As an expert on this arm, tell me a little bit more detail about the complexity. What is this arm capable of? How does it work?

When the space shuttle arm grabs something, it's just like your hand inside a big mitten. You can grab on to something, but you can't feel it. You can't heat it. You just grab something dumb and you're just holding on to it like a claw. Now, that gives you capability. You can move it around and position it and everything. But, it's really just a mechanical interface. Well, when the space station arm grabs something, it not only grabs it mechanically but it also plugs in electrically. And it plugs in with computer connections. So, not only can you grab something, but you can power it. So, when you grab something, you can give electricity to it. You can also communicate with it so that, if it has systems or video signals or something that you need to communicate with, the arm has the capability to talk to those systems. So, the arm becomes a conduit through to whatever it grabs on to. So, that's quite an added capability; a couple of generations' worth of capability. It's also bigger and stronger. It's the shuttle arm on steroids. It has the capability to grab the entire space shuttle and move the space shuttle around-very slowly but still move the space shuttle around. A quarter of a million pounds or 100,000 kilograms. So, it's a lot more robust. It's also longer. Several, well many feet longer than the arm on the shuttle. And then, finally it has a hand on both ends so that it can, like an inchworm, walk around the space station if has to. They invented a word. It can "pedipulate" around the space station, pedipulate around if it needs to. And, when the arm is complete, when subsequent flights have brought up all the rest of the pieces of it, it will actually have one end in a little railcar and the other end will be able to grab something out of the shuttle and then trundle, ever so slowly, the whole length of the space station and then attach that new piece at the end. It's a huge erector set in space with this arm as the only way to put all those things together. So, it's really the grandson or granddaughter of the arm that is on the shuttle. And, we've really learned a lot of lessons from the shuttle arm in building the station arm.

And the station arm obviously is attached to the space station. Is the station crew involved in any way in powering it up?

The station arm also has one big difference with the shuttle arm. And, that is that it is not just a visitor to space but it's a permanent resident of space. It's going to stay up there for 15 years. It is completely powered by the sun. Because the electricity is gathered by the station, collected through its batteries, and run through the arm. So, it's a solar-powered arm. And the crew on board powers it up, brings it to life, runs the computers that make it operate, and fly it, moving it in all three axes with one hand and rotating it with the other hand. So, it's very much an extension of their own hands and their own capabilities outside of the space station. And being a resident of space, that means that any repair on that new space station arm that will be required over the next 15 years needs to be done by the station crew. And the arm is also very exquisitely designed, so that you can actually take each joint-like being able to replace your elbow joint-they can go up and take the upper and lower arms of the space station off, a space station arm off and remove a whole joint and put a new joint in. Performing arm surgery, as required, in order to keep the arm healthy over its 15-year life on station. So, it's a real interesting development in robotics technology as well as an invaluable tool for the space station crew living inside.

The airlock is a critical piece of hardware that's going to be installed later on. What is the airlock and why is the robot arm crucial to its installation?

When you live in a complicated building, even at home, you can do a lot of stuff staying inside. But, sometimes you need to go outside and fix things. Look at your switching box and fix your roof and replace windows and do all those things. You have to go outside. And the same thing's true on the space station of course. They had to go outside of Mir dozens and dozens of times to go fix things and attach things and repair things and make things better. And the same will happen on the new space station. And so, you need a hatch to go through. And when you're going to go outside, of course, you're in a pressurized space suit. But, if you pressurize your space suit to sea-level pressure, you'd just be stuck in a balloon. You could never even bend your fingers. You'd be exhausted after just a few minutes, just fighting the pressure of the suit. So when you go outside on a space walk, you're down about a third of an atmosphere. Low pressure. About 5 pounds per square inch as opposed to 15 so that you can bend your suit. And so to go from the pressure inside the station to the pressure outside the station, you need a small chamber-an airlock-that you go into that you can slowly let all the air out of and let your suit get down to the pressure that it needs to be and then slowly get right down to the vacuum of space and open up the hatch and go outside. And, the little chamber that will be on the space station is the ISS airlock. That comes up on the flight after ours; on 7A. And, you don't really want every time you do a space walk to lose all of that air out to the vacuum of space. Because then you'd slowly get less and less air in the station. What you'd like to do instead is pump that air down into tanks and keep that air so that when you come back in from your space walk, you close the hatch and then you just release that air back into the chamber again. Into the airlock again. And, that's one of the capabilities of this new airlock is its own compressors and its own air-collection system. And of course it also [needs] to be able to support the space walking suits. It has to have the racks and the equipment and the oxygen and electrical and communications attachments and things to be able to support the space walking suits that are in there. So, the airlock will provide that capability for the station. The station will now be big enough that you aren't just going to do space walks from the shuttle. And you aren't just going to do space walks from the Russian end of the space station. But you need to be able to do space walks from the central Node; and that's what that airlock will give the station.

And how will the robot arm be used to install that airlock?

The airlock will come to space and come to the space station in the back of the shuttle. And with the size of the space station when it gets there, the arm on the shuttle can't lift that airlock up high enough and get it properly installed around on the starboard side of the space station. So, it falls on the broad shoulders of the space station arm to reach into, actually into the payload bay of the shuttle for the very first time and grab on to that big airlock and lift it out and bring it around and attach it on to the right-hand side - the starboard side - of the space station. It'll be the very first real job for the new space station arm-for the station arm-is the installation of the airlock. And, it's really kind of the proving ground for the arm because, of course, it'll be counted on to build the rest of the station in the years that follow.

This flight crew is made up of Americans, a Russian, an Italian, a Canadian. And, you're delivering and using hardware developed by the Italians and the Canadians. What do you think this demonstrates about the growing role of cooperation in space?

When human beings first started going to space, it was for a bunch of different reasons. And everybody knows the fundamental driving reason to get to the moon was really an expression of national might. Of the ability of the United States to do something amazing in competition with another country. Really a child of the Cold War. Against the Soviet Union at the time. And, it accomplished a tremendous thing. An amazing technological achievement. But, it's also self-limiting. When your primary purpose is really just an expression of might and with a definite goal in mind of doing one thing and planting a flag and then saying, "There, we've done it," that doesn't naturally lead to a future in space. A planting of [a] flag, of getting to the mountaintop attitude although it gets you to the top of the mountain is also self-limiting. I think what we're doing now, although it is less grandiose than planting a flag on the surface of the moon, it's less photogenic perhaps, it is better for the history of the world in that we are now leaving Earth as a unified planet. For the first time in history, we are really doing something as Earthlings. And, the dozen…dozen-and-a-half nations of the world that are participating, the leading nations of the world, despite a history where a Cold War is less than a generation in our past, we are still managing somehow to find a way to cooperate and do this thing together. And, it is by no means the answer to all the problems. And, nor is it a complete closing of the door of history behind [this]. But, it is definitely opening a door into the future. That we are finding this common ground of space, of what lies beyond Earth, to cooperate internationally. And I am extremely lucky and happy to be part of a crew, an international crew that is in the process. That is part of that international effort, both on my last flight - where we were an international crew going to the Russian space station - and on this flight -where we're an even-more international crew going to the International Space Station. And I really hope that we can sustain the momentum that we're building now and keep the lessons that we're learning as we move further into space. As we solve the problems that are involved with just going to a space station and use those lessons to go further and to go on to Mars. It'll be an international crew that will go and set foot on Mars. And it's great now. It's never been a more exciting time, I don't think, to be an astronaut than now, where we are permanently leaving Earth as a planet. It's an amazing time.