Vlog 27: Dealing with emergencies

Uploaded on February 26, 2026

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Vlog 27: Dealing with emergencies

In this vlog, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen explains how astronauts prepare for various potential emergencies before, during and after launch. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA, Fulwell 73 UK Limited)

If we happen to get a hole in our spacecraft on the journey, which is a real risk, then we have to get into our spacesuits to protect our lives from the depressurization.

When we go out to the rocket for launch day, it is fully fuelled and ready to go.

We go up the elevator; we get strapped in. But if there's any sort of problem with the rocket before we actually leave the pad, we really only have two options.

The first option, if we're early in the count, is we will open this hatch and emergency egress, and we'll go down baskets and slide wires to get away from the launch tower – hopefully before there was any sort of explosion – get into some somewhat armoured vehicles and drive away from the launch pad.

If we're within five minutes of launch, we will have armed our abort system, which is like an ejection seat for this entire capsule. And during that period, if we have a problem or when the rocket starts to fire and begins the launch sequence, we can actually eject off the top of the rocket and then splash down just off the coast of Florida under parachutes in this capsule. And then we would egress from there.

If we do land in an off-nominal location and we need to get out of the capsule by ourselves, how are we going to open this big heavy hatch, that keeps us safe from the vacuum of space, but we need to get out of it in a hurry if we have a problem? So, we practise doing that, in here.

And then over here, these orange bags are all of our survival equipment. So if we don't land in the right place, we may have to survive in the capsule for a period of time.

We practise using all of the survival equipment here, both in this building and also in our big pool at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.

Of course we train for other emergencies. So, one of the big ones is if we happen to get a hole in our spacecraft on the journey, if we happen to hit a piece of space debris, which is a real risk, then we have to get into our spacesuits to protect our lives from the depressurization. And maybe there's a chance that we'd be able to stop the leak. But then if we can't, we just stay in our spacesuits until we can get back to Earth.

Of course we plan for fires. 

Obviously, you've got things like a fire extinguisher.

So just like you would manage fires on Earth, we can manage fires in space in a similar way.

Those are the big emergencies that we need to plan for.

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