Hadfield prepares for spacewalks

Uploaded on June 23, 2012

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Hadfield prepares for spacewalks

2012-06-23 - CSA Astronaut Chris Hadfield and his colleague Tom Marshburn practice a complex spacewalking task in an International Space Station (ISS) simulator at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. They will be a part of Expedition 34/35, a long-duration mission on board the ISS that launches in December 2012. (Credit: Canadian Space Agency)

Chris Hadfield:

We're at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, in Building 9. It's where all of our full size simulators are. Today, we're practising spacewalking and specifically putting together fluid connectors. The fluids are mostly very high pressure ammonia and so when you're trying to connect in space during a space walk, sometimes the pressures are really high and ammonia's pretty nasty stuff if it gets on you. So it's really important to do it correctly.

So we have all of the equipment behind me. We have a special board back there that you can actually pressurize it so you can get an understanding of the forces, the techniques, how you manhandle the big flexible hoses in the way.

All getting ready so that when the day comes in orbit, you can remember what you did here in Building 9 and hopefully your hands will work in concert and will be successful as needed. 

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