Celebrating 20 Years of International Space Station Spacewalks

On July 20, 2001, two NASA astronauts took the first “steps” out of the International Space Station’s Quest airlock, marking the start of two decades of successful spacewalks in support of station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades enabling all of the life and work onboard to take place. On the same date 32 years before this milestone spacewalk outside the space station, two Apollo astronauts were taking historic steps of their own on the lunar surface for the first time. Astronaut Mike Gernhardt tells us what it was like to follow in such momentous footsteps and how crucial innovations, like the airlock and many others, are to the future of human exploration near and far.

What is said in the film

So, wow, that was a-a huge experience in my life. Um, we worked for many years to get ready for that. And then we were sitting in the crew lock, which is this part of the airlock that goes to vacuum. We were supposed to depressurize in 30 minutes. That was the-that was the theoretical thing.

But they missed the calculation somewhat, and it took over an hour. So I'm-- you know, we're kinda anxious. And then the capcom, dan burbank, whispered in my ear, "this is the anniversary of the first moonwalk. " and I did not know that. And we weren't expecting to go out the door on that date.

And so -- anyhow, all those thoughts were running through my mind. And then, as I went out the door, it's very different than the shuttle. I had done spacewalks in the shuttle, and we have the payload bay underneath you. You feel like you have a floor under you. And we came out, or I came out first.

Um, and the hatch of the iss airlock points nadir, which means towards earth. So, as you look out the hatch, you feel like you're falling from 250 miles. So that was a big rush. Everything we do at nasa is a great team effort. And-and I work with one of the greatest teams at nasa to develop this airlock and the protocol.

When I went out the door, I had all their names on my cuff checklist. And I really, uh, really showed 'em my appreciation for all the teamwork that it took. And-and, uh, it was really quite an amazing, uh, effort. And when you look at it, you know, the space station was assembled from spacewalks, it's maintained from spacewalks. We've had to change out batteries and do all kinds of maintenance.

If you can't get out the door efficiently, then you can't do all these spacewalks. And so, the implementation of the airlock with the pre-brief protocol that-that was basically, like, two and a half hours, which was actually very low compared to what we thought we'd have to do. And then all of the little tools that we developed for that mission. Things like the crew lock bags that you carry your tools in. I-I worked with the-the, uh, crew and thermal systems guys to design those.

And then we, um-- I had actually invented this device called the body restraint tether that comes off your waist. And you use that to hold onto a handhold for anything but really high force tasks, that's enough to restrain yourself. And so, um-- and we honestly, probably, couldn't have built station as well as we did without that. It feels great. So, all those techniques t-that we really developed to do, um, spacewalks from the space station have been used again and again and again to great success.

So, the spacewalks on the moon will be very different than on iss. On iss, we're doing some detail maintenance, changing out battery packs and things of this nature. Whereas, on the moon, we're there to explore and-and to take advantage of the human brain and judgement and their hands to do exploration. So-so the task will involved science. We'll still have some maintenance to do on the rover.

There will still be some of that. But your daily, uh, spacewalks will be focused on the science.

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