images

Star City's pool

by

ESA/Novapix

Reference

e-rus01-10601

Date

2009-03-20

Wearing Russian 100-kg Orlan spacesuit and helped by divers, ESA astronaut André Kuipers, from The Netherlands (partly visible on the left, with orange bands), and an unidentified Russian cosmonaut (with blue bands) during training for extravehicular activities (EVAs) at the Gagarin Training Center, also known as Zviezdny Gorodok ("Star City"), near Moscow, as part of the preparation work on the operations of the European Robotic Arm (ERA) for the International Space Station (ISS) in December 2004. This facility consists in a 23-m-wide and 12-m-deep water reservoir, with a capacity of 5,000 cubic meters. It incorporates a platform, which can carry up to 15 tons of mock space station modules for training.