Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
1
“The story always starts with ‘tssssss…’, it’s the sound of air rushing out of the capsule into the vacuum of space as astronauts feel change of pressure in ears and wait for their brains to explode,” said Misha Popov of the tale of Spektr in Netflix’s fictional series Away. Spektr was a module aboard the Russian Mir space station, which received a puncture when it collided with the Progress M-34 resupply vehicle on June 25, 1997.
The crisis, considered by some to be the worst collision in the history of space flight (but here's four more space disasters for your nightmare fuel), happened when Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliev was operating Progress from onboard Mir via remote control. Unfortunately, dodgy visuals meant he wasn’t able to gauge the speed Progress was moving at, only realizing it was going way too fast when it was too late.
All 7 tons of Progress crashed into Spektr, sending Mir into a spin as well as punching a hole in its side which astrophysicist and NASA astronaut Michael Foale registered as his ears popped and he heard a whistling sound coming from the compromised module.
"This is not something you see in movies where it all gets solved instantly by some brainy chap," he said in a later interview. "It took probably six hours [to correct]."
They were eventually able to rectify the uncontrolled spinning by using jets to slow Mir to a halt, but now they had a hole.
What happens when a spacecraft gets a hole in it?
Think about going up in an airplane with a packet of crisps, you look down upon reaching the highest altitude to see your once crumpled packet has inflated. This is because the pressure outside of the vacuum-sealed packet is less than it was at ground level, which means there’s less resistance against the packet so it can take up more space while air molecules are still bouncing around inside it.
The same applies to a spacecraft as it escalates out of the atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. Here, there is no pressure exerted by air molecules but the pressure inside a spacecraft is maintained at a level close to what we experience on Earth’s surface with lots of air molecules bouncing around inside, too.
This means that, should a leak appear in the form of a puncture, air molecules will seep out as they pass through the hole and out into the vacuum of space — that’s your “tsss” sound. As for brains exploding? Not so much, but for Foale and colleagues on board Spektr it was still very scary.
"It was frightening for one or two seconds,” he told the BBC. “The first thought was are we going to die instantly because of air rushing out so fast we can't control it."
"In 23 minutes, if we did nothing, we would start to go unconscious," he said.
Fortunately, the leak was slow enough for Mir’s crew to install a hatch cover and seal off the module so that the hole wouldn’t eventually depressurize the entire station. This solution came with its own problems regarding power cables feeding Mir’s solar panels, so the astronauts had to carry out an internal spacewalk wearing space suits inside Spektr to restore the cables' functions.
There were, however, some casualties.
“Quite a lot of [equipment] was left in that module along with my personal effects,” said Foale after the collision. “Since then, I’ve managed to find myself a toothbrush, toothpaste, some clothes and even a pair of shoes to run with, so life is getting back to normal for me.”
Had they not been able to seal off the module, the entirety of Mir would have eventually depressurized until its internal conditions matched that of outer space, which begs the question…
What would happen to the human body in space without a suit?
