Original subtitles

One hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface

lies an invisible frontier: the edge of space.

This is the Karman Line: the boundary between our planet’s atmosphere

and what lies beyond.

What does it take to cross that line?

To date, some 450 cosmonauts, astronauts, taikonauts,

the names all mean the same,

have crossed that unseen line.

Cold War test pilots, to begin with, then geologists, engineers, and scientists

of one kind or another.

Mission specialists now come in all sizes and nationalities.

Even politicians and cashed-up tourists have gate-crashed the space party.

But how do you earn an astronaut’s wings?

As Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space, has said,

"An astronaut’s life is one of preparation and simulation and training and support

on the ground and anticipation and visualization. And very, very seldom,

almost never is an astronaut’s life about flying in space."

In one sense, the key to becoming an astronaut is simple: brute force.

But selection for space is an exhaustive process.

Astronaut candidates must be fit, physically and mentally,

to endure the rigors of training.

High intelligence is essential while bravery is a useful character trait.

The current crew of astronauts have trained for work

on the International Space Station while others are working towards missions

yet to come.

They have one thing in common: they all consider themselves lucky. I never planned to become an astronaut. I mean, I knew that

it's a very small likelihood, and so as a scientist, I knew the statistics,

meaning like, "Okay, if I tried to become an astronaut... probably won't work out."

So for me applying with ESA to become an astronaut was not as much a thing

of me believing that I would become an astronaut

but more trying to give my dream a chance that I had.

That I knew I was always looking forward or trying to see,

"Do I have a chance to actually go there?"

It also helps if you know how to use one of these.

I find my background as a pilot very helpful just in the way that

I'd previously been taught how to follow procedures. For example, as a pilot,

communication methods, working together in a team in an international environment.

All of those sort of skills are very useful in this job.

Of course I had expectations before I started,

but the job as an astronaut is so unique. I think it's difficult

to have a realistic sense of what to expect, so certainly some things have been

what I expected. I mean, the excitement, the uniqueness, the wonder

of human space flight is exactly what I thought it'd be.

Other things, of course, have been different

simply because it's such a unique world to train for a mission.

Astronaut candidates should expect a two-year period

of training and evaluation.

Learning to live and work in extreme environments comes right at the start.

Movie buffs will recall Key Largo in Florida as an isolated place

for Humphrey Bogart. Now it houses NASA’s NEMO facility, Aquarius,

training astronauts for both the ISS and future asteroid missions.

Other unwelcoming environments used for isolation and team-building

include the Sa Grutta caves in Sardinia, Italy.

The ESA caves mission,

that I was a part of a few years ago where I spent a week living

underneath the ground in a gigantic cave system. The two NASA NEMO missions

that I've been able to participate in. I mean, all these things

are fantastic opportunities in and of themselves.

And just having those opportunities without going to space would be fantastic,

but, so to have them and then to go to space, as well, is just really a...

it's what makes this job so unique and so fantastic.

Of course, space flight training is not easy. I think that's clear.

I mean, for three and a half years, you have to travel almost every three weeks.

You fly over the Atlantic. You're in different training locations.

You spend about five percent of your time at home.

And if so, maybe then just a weekend here or there.

So it's a challenge.

Training takes us all around the world into every center. I've already done two

or three orbits round the world but just in a plane going from NASA to Russia

to Japan and back to Europe. So it's already... the training as an astronaut,

in itself, is already rewarding. I mean, it's already a dream job and, even better,

it gets you to a flight in the end, so there's no time to be bored.

There's no time to think too much about what you're doing. Every day, you're busy.

Every day is a good day, and that's gonna continue until the flight.

-Use the ladder. -Okay.

Careful, and I'll just follow you.

'Kay, and we'll sit down there.

Space training in Europe begins at the European Astronaut Centre

in Cologne, Germany, where trainees learn the essentials of maintenance

and repair of onboard systems.

...either move or clean or just inspect the filter, we would need to close the...

They also continue their basic EVA training

in another unfriendly environment: under water.

In general, the training at the different locations varies quite a bit.

First, there's the technical side which means, like, we're training in Japan

on the systems that Japan supplied to the space station in Russia.

We're training on the Russian segment of the International Space Station in the US.

We train for the US side, and at ESA, we train for Columbus and ATV,

which are the modules that ESA supplied to the space station.

Next, the candidates move on to NASA’s larger Johnson Space Flight Center

in Houston, Texas for extensive EVA training.

Training at the JSC is always very busy because we do many different things.

And it's a huge facility, so we're moving all the time from one building

to the other, like, here we are in the Building 9, where we have a replica of all the American modules of the space station. So in this building,

we train for the space station. Some of it is daily operations.

Some of it is actually off-nominal operations like emergencies.

Like in this mock-up center's building, just yesterday,

I did a five-hour emergency simulation with my crew-mates,

with a full crew, complement of six people of Expedition 42.

And that, of course, is not something that you would call "daily operations".

That's something that we really don't want to happen,

but we train it a lot because emergencies would put us, as crew, in danger.

...HCN1, decimal, 2...

The great thing about being trained on emergencies is that it gives you a state of mind. Having the knowledge, having the training

can help you in any situation, in any condition just like it happened to me

during my EVA. It was an unexpected emergency

that we had not been trained for, but because you have received training

that is all encompassing, it gives you the state of mind

where you look forward to the solution

rather than focusing on the problem.

EVAs, Extra Vehicular Activities,

sound routine enough.

But "spacewalks," as we know them,

are among the most dangerous duties an astronaut must carry out.

Preparation and safety-conscious planning are critical.

Behind me, you see a lot of equipment which is related to the airlock operations

in case of a spacewalk, so we train this here as well.

There's also another completely different facility which is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab

that's a huge pool, and in there, we train for spacewalks under water.

Neutral buoyancy training tanks are in place at ESA’s Cologne facility

and at Star City in Moscow, but JSC has the biggest.

EVA training is fantastic.

It's physically difficult. It's one of the most challenging parts of the training.

But it's also one of the most realistic. When you are in the pool for six hours,

you get tired, but at some point, you really think you're on the ISS.

You look around you, and there's the structure everywhere.

Sometimes you even get disoriented because that's what happens in space.

It's like a 3D labyrinth of technology. It's a maze of technology.

There is so much going on here because we not only train space station

but robotics, spacewalks... so it's a very complex training system,

and it's very exciting to be part of it.

I think one of the hardest parts of the astronaut's job

is to retain all this different information

over the two-and-a-half-year period from being assigned to actually launching.

Yeah, there's an awful lot of information on the Soyuz, on the space station itself,

robotic training, EVA training... the list goes on.

So to try and retain all that, the way that they do that is just

by having a refresher training, really, along our path to launch.

JAXA, Japan's space agency, trains astronauts in the operation

of the country's ISS contribution, the "Kibo" experiment module,

with its space exposure platform.

...so this is...

I guess it has a very Japanese flavor to it. I mean, the content

and the way the content is presenting and delivered is pretty much standardized.

But of course, you know, the instructors are Japanese.

They have that very polite, very kind Japanese way about them.

In Saint-Hubert, Quebec,

the Canadian Space Agency's mobile servicing system operations complex

schools astronauts in using robotic arms on station.

Here's the station at scale, and here's the robotic arm, also at scale. It moves,

and we can plan our maneuvers. As you can see,

the main challenge to not hit anything while you're moving this arm

'cause all you got, really, when you're working, you come here.

There's this work station. You got the couple of camera views to work from.

You got your hand controllers to move the arm.

And you got the, you know, some computer displays and a bunch of switches, here,

on the left. That's all you got, so you really got to think ahead

how you're gonna maneuver this arm without crashing into anything

because, of course, that would be a very bad day on orbit.

Star City, near Moscow in Russia, was the birthplace

of manned space flight.

It remains a key training center

where all ISS-assigned trainee astronauts go through the program.

When you first start in Star City, you immediately feel

like you're part of something bigger than just your own personal history.

Because... your personal story... because you see people have been here

since the beginning. There's even, supposedly,

Uri Gagarin's wife is still living there. Even though she's very old,

she's still living in the vicinity. So you just cross people in the corridor,

and they've known all those guys. And I was just a kid,

and those guys were already in human spaceflight. So you try to learn

as much as you can and try to do your best for the technical side of the job

and try to interact as much as possible with the people

'cause they're so experienced. They have a lot to give you.

Expecting the unexpected is a basic training principle,

like landing off-course after the mission

or touching down in the Siberian tundra.

As NASA has no manned flight hardware of its own at present, the agency purchases seats on Russia’s "Soyuz" spacecraft.

All astronauts must be trained on the Soyuz systems

which poses a problem of its own: everything is, of course, in Russian.

All the documentation's in Russian in the Soyuz spacecraft,

and, of course, all the conversation's in Russian, as well, which is the reason

for us having all the Russian lessons during our training flow.

Not only must you know the Russian language,

when in Russian spacecraft, you must also wear Russian spacesuits.

When the SOCO spacesuit actually pressurizes,

things do become much more difficult to work because you're kind of fixed

in your seat in a very rigid location,

and it's hard to bend your arms and bend your fingers, in fact.

So even just sort of reading the board documentation can be quite difficult.

But hopefully, you won't be pressurized when you do a normal descent.

Hopefully, the spacecraft will come down without any problems,

and your spacesuit will be much softer which makes it easier to move.

Here in Star City, I'm using most of my time in the Soyuz simulator together

with my commander.

Suddenly, it's starting to feel a lot more real, you know.

When you're sitting in the Soyuz, and you're really going

through the whole launch and landing sequence, you can feel

that you're getting close to the date. And it's very, very exciting.

It's a very well-oiled machine, this flow to launch,

and I'm confident, that, you know, by the time every astronaut flies,

you're really ready to go. You're prepared in every way.

As things stand, an astronaut bound for a six-month mission to the ISS

needs up to five years' training, a requirement which will,

in all likelihood, be intensified for future missions to deep space.

The ISS will probably be used as a long duration astronauts training facility

for missions to Mars and beyond.

We are also all people that are selected to be able to get along with each other.

That's kind of like the way you select astronauts, nowadays,

for long duration space flights. You really want to have people

that are benign, sort of easy to get along with other people.

So much of our work up there is determined

by the visiting vehicle traffic.

And that's a very dynamic phase because we're not quite sure

exactly which vehicles are going to arrive when.

These vehicles bring up a lot of science.

They bring up a lot of hardware that is, determines when the EVAs are done.

And also, they, of course, determine the robotics activity that goes on

to capture the vehicles. So when you're not quite sure

what the visiting vehicle schedule is like, you're not quite sure

exactly what science and when it's going to be done onboard the space station.

One six-months increment for the whole crew is around 300 experiments,

out of which there's 55, 60 for ESA. So that's a wide array of domains

like medicine, technology, material science, fluid science,

everything you can think of.

We're trying to make the most of the conditions in space and the microgravity

to get results that wouldn't be possible to achieve on Earth.

So one of the things I've learned is you just have to be extremely flexible.

And we get trained on how to do tasks that may be planned six months

ahead of our mission and may be planned six months after our mission.

So that should there be some flex, and those activities fall within our increment

then we're trained, and we're ready to do those as well.

Which leftover smell?

Whoa. It's not good.

Not good?

No.

Looking out of the window is really one

of the most fantastic experiences that you can have

from the International Space Station.

Our earth is so beautiful, and yet when you look outside,

you see that the atmosphere that surrounds our earth is so thin.

It's merely like an eggshell around an egg. It's so fragile.

And the vulnerability, the fragility of our planet is very, very visible

from on Earth. You see this blue ball and then above: nothing. Just black.

Absolutely nothing in this immense universe. And I would hope

that more people would be able to fly to space. More, maybe, of our politicians,

decision makers, would be able to fly to space and really see the vulnerability

of our planet so that we can finally start doing something about climate change.

So... the way it installs, this needs to be in the flush...

Cut, cut, cut, cut.

We're just so prepared. All the emergencies, all the possible failures, we're trying them over and over and over again, so we're supposed

to be able to handle any situation. We sat in the simulator hundreds of hours.

We know the systems inside out, so there's nothing, really, that we fear, I think,

on the technical side.

Even with all that training, astronauts are well aware of the dangers

of space flight: riding a rocket full of explosive fuel,

living in an enclosed environment with a thin sheet of aluminium

between you and hard vacuum, solar and cosmic radiation,

bullet-like micrometeorites and space debris.

Then, there is the threat of onboard fire or mechanical failure,

and, to cap it all off, the fiery return to Earth.

There is, however, one problem that returning astronauts cannot avoid.

And that's gravity.

When you get back home, of course, I will always remember.

This was the same for my first flight or for my second flight:

the moment they open up the hatch, and you feel this fresh, cold air

coming into your capsule. This is really something, and you're out there, of course

in the Steppe. You have this real soil kind of smell that you have.

It's really feeling fantastic. And then they get you out of the capsule,

and the first thing, of course, that you want to do is to contact your family,

your friends, saying, "I'm alright. Everything is great.

We will see each other tonight." And then, you just want to rest and to sleep

because you're so tired, of course, from this long day of coming back.

And also, the gravity is really... then having an impact on your body.

You can't... It's difficult to stand up.

It's... everything that you have to lift is hard... is difficult.

And this takes a couple of days. But after a couple of days, of course,

you recover well. You have a very good recovery program, here,

at our European Astronaut Centre. Our people are really, very focused

on getting the astronaut back up to the level as he was before the flight

as soon as possible. And then, of course, it's... again, after awhile,

business as usual.

I'm reaching the end of my career, and being able to do a last flight

and really, again, put at work for myself, but also for everybody else,

all the knowledge and the heart that I've acquired during this year.

It's a very great opportunity, and I'm really happy

that I've been assigned for this.

There is another way of crossing that unseen line

on the edge of space: by paying your own way as the ultimate tourist.

A number of wealthy individuals have already done so.

Soon enough, it will become cheaper and accessible to the ordinary mortal,

provided he or she can pass the medical.

You know, when our test pilots and wonderful team

that run Virgin Galactic say that, "We're ready... and ready to go."

And then, you know, I'll be ready to climb in and, you know, be the, you know,

the first passenger, as such, you know, to go to space and to become an astronaut.

And from there, hopefully thousands of people will follow me.