The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Hovering inside the node in their spacesuits, the two Russians got the go-ahead from the ground to begin depressurizing.

Everything was finally going as planned. Then, suddenly, at 1:23, just as the pressure reached 210 millimeters of mercury, Vinogradov felt something move inside the left arm of his suit, something feathery and light brushing against his inner forearm. With a start he realized it was air. There was a leak in his suit.

Vinogradov said on open comm: “I started moving my hand and the pressure is going down [in] my suit. When I move, I feel the air is moving.”

Foale was the first to react. “Pavel, stop!” he blurted through his headset. “Stop moving your hand!”

“Stop, stop moving your hand!” Anatoli Solovyov chimed in.

On the TsUP floor, Vladimir Solovyov and his ground controllers exchanged worried looks. “Pavel, don’t move your hand,” Solovyov said calmly.

If Vinogradov moved his hand enough to loosen the glove, all the air in his suit could be sucked out in a matter of minutes. Vladimir Solovyov took several moments to confer with Blagov and the others. As they talked, Foale was struck by Vinogradov’s reaction. “He wasn’t scared by it,” Foale remembered, “but I sure was. I was as worried as I’ve ever been during spaceflight.”

Vinogradov was in fact as frightened as he had been in his life, but he struggled not to show it. He realized the leak was somewhere in the fitting between his glove and his spacesuit. Fighting to remain calm, he took his right hand and grasped his left wrist firmly, trying to staunch the flow of air from his suit. Behind him, Solovyov urged him to stay calm. Even with his glove clamped shut, Vinogradov believed air was still leaking from his suit. He estimated he had about fifteen minutes of air inside his suit.

“Pay attention!” Vladimir Solovyov barked after a moment. “This is very serious.”

This Vinogradov did not need to hear. He knew it was serious.

“Pasha, don’t worry,” Solovyov went on. “Don’t take any steps that are not well thought out… We have time.”

Solovyov directed Vinogradov to close the star-shaped depress valve. The node was so small, the two men were pressed so tightly together, only Vinogradov could reach it. Awkwardly, he grabbed the valve with his left hand, all the while keeping his right hand clamped around his wrist. Slowly, he managed to crank the valve closed. The ground estimated it would take seven minutes for the air to stop seeping out of the node. Vinogradov hoped the air in his suit would last that long.

Minutes ticked by. The repressurization valve was on Anatoli Solovyov’s side of the node, but the commander could not begin repressurizing the node until Vinogradov’s valve was completely closed. Vinogradov was quietly thankful his glove hadn’t opened further. “If my glove had opened completely,” he recalled months later, “I wouldn’t have been able to close that valve at all. Anatoli could not get to it. Only I could close it. I don’t even know what would have happened then.” But he did know: if the commander couldn’t find a way to close the valve, Vinogradov would suffocate.

After seven minutes the pressure inside the node stabilized. Immediately the commander cranked the emergency repress valve, allowing air from base block to whistle into the node. With a loud hiss the pressure began rising. It took barely ninety seconds for it to climb back to 540.

If they were to have any hope of completing the IVA today, Vladimir Solovyov knew, they must quickly replace Vinogradov’s leaking glove.

“Pasha, do you have a spare glove?” Solovyov asked.

Both cosmonauts had brought bags containing two spare gloves into the node with them. When the pressure reached 540, Vinogradov reached for his bag, took out his extra left glove, and quickly slid it on.

“You turn it, pull it with all your proletarian might, and break it out a little,” Solovyov instructed. “Minimize the amount of time when your hand is bare.”

It was 1:32. Vinogradov took two minutes to make sure the glove’s seal was tight. At 1:34 he announced that he was ready to continue. Vladimir Solovyov did a quick calculation to make sure that, with all the air they had used, there would be enough remaining to fully repressurize the node at the end of the IVA. According to his maths, there was.

“Okay, then let’s start again,” Vladimir Solovyov said.

Again Vinogradov took his left hand and turned the depress valve. The hiss of air filled their ears. In silence, the two cosmonauts waited as the atmosphere leaked back out into space. By 1:47 the pressure had fallen to 460. Five minutes later it was at 110. At 1:54 it had fallen to 50. Five minutes later, as the cosmonauts waited to enter vacuum, the station moved out of communications range with the ground. The men in the TsUP, with hundreds of reporters and cameramen clogging the mezzanine above them, would have to wait forty-five minutes for Mir to come back into range. In the meantime they could only hope there was not another unexpected problem.