The most terrifying thing about space is not that
it is vast and empty. It is the fact that it is only mostly empty.
A few decades ago, a tale emerged from the otherwise
mundane routine that maintained the Second International Space Station,
shortened to just ISS2, which has now been decommissioned. It began when German
astronaut Ingo Mess was alone on a spacewalk out on the station’s hull in order
to fix a little damage that had been done to one of the solar panels by
microscopic space debris. As he was about to enter the airlock again, to his
shock, he spotted something out in the distance. It looked like a human in a
spacesuit, floating alone in the void. And it was moving. Mess claimed that the
figure was fidgeting frantically and waving, obviously in distress. Mess
entered the airlock, reported to his crew what he had just witnessed, and got out
a manned maneuvering unit (MMU), a form of space-jetpack. With that he went out
to retrieve the floating spacefarer. Mess claims again that the figure was waving
and beckoning to him as he approached, but then suddenly stopped moving as he
got closer. Mess feared that it was already too late and the person fainted or
even died from the long isolation in space. He grabbed the body and retrieved
it.
Once past the airlock, it became apparent that the
body was clad in a Soviet spacesuit, of the Orlan-D-type typically worn by
cosmonauts during the 1970s and 80s. At the time, the orbit of the ISS2 was close
to that of the Plutonia, a smaller Soviet space station, so, even if the
chances of such a thing happening are astronomically low, the astronauts
speculated that maybe an accident had dislodged one of the cosmonauts from his
station and by pure luck he had drifted to theirs. But to everyone’s shock,
once the visor was lifted and the helmet removed, they saw that there was no
person inside. It was just an empty spacesuit.
Perhaps the movement that Mess reported was an optical
illusion or even caused by gas escaping from the suit or air tank. When
contacted, the crew of the Plutonia reported that there had been no incidents
and that none of their cosmonauts had gone missing. But this opened up more
questions, mainly why there was an empty spacesuit just floating around in
Earth orbit, let alone a historic relic from the 70s? The suit was eventually
chalked up to a mishap or perhaps even durability test during the early days of
spaceflight that had gone unreported or forgotten.
However, the incident seems to have had a negative
impact on Mess, whose crewmembers described him afterwards as increasingly
erratic and “suspicious” of the suit. Days after retrieval, he still claimed to
have seen it move when he looked at it through the security camera of the
station’s storage room. The other astronauts chalked this up to swaying caused
by microgravity.
Nonetheless, things really did start to become
strange on the space station after the suit’s retrieval. The number of minor
system errors did demonstrably increase, while many crewmembers started reporting
health problems. The suit itself was frequently found outside its storage area
after the astronauts woke up from sleep, one time even with its glove gripping
the lever of the airlock. These incidents were most likely pranks on Mess by another
crewmember.
When things truly got concerning was during the
spacewalk of another astronaut, when she noticed there was a small hole in her
suit and it was losing air rapidly. She thankfully noticed quickly and was able
to re-enter the airlock before asphyxiating. The following days, Mess tried to
do her job but before leaving the airlock he noticed that his suit was also
perforated at the sleeves. The other suits on the station were soon after also
found to have little holes poked into them. Someone was seemingly sabotaging the
crew.
The cosmonaut suit itself ended up being the only
one left intact and useable, in part because it was also in a surprisingly good
condition despite its age and having been out in space for so long. Eventually,
it was decided to bite the bullet and have one of the astronauts don the suit
in order to get the necessary repairs on the station’s hull done. However, this
was prevented by Ingo Mess, who barred anyone from even approaching the suit,
because he feared something bad was emanating from it. Before anyone could wear
it, Mess secretly ejected the suit back out of the airlock while the rest of the
crew were sleeping. After he did, he reported that the suit began flailing
again in panic, briefly holding onto one of the solar panels before losing grip
and silently drifting back forever into deep space.
After the incident, the astronauts were able to
repair one of their own suits again into a workable condition and fix the hull
and panels. Technical and health problems also decreased and all crewmembers
were able to safely return to Earth after the end of their mission. Mess,
however, was largely shunned by his colleagues and reprimanded for his actions
by the command centre. He had to go through another psychological evaluation,
under fear that the isolation in space and his long separation from his wife
and child had taken a mental toll on him. But the evaluation found him to be
perfectly lucid and mentally competent, if a little traumatized from the experience.
Nevertheless, the following years largely saw the
incident, including even the sabotage of the other spacesuits, being blamed on
Mess’ mental health and his previously respected reputation sank quite a bit,
at least outside of the circles of conspiracy theorists. Mess himself claims
that his actions saved the lives of the entire crew. He has come up with his
own explanations for what was up with the suit and the weird string of
coincidences that befell the astronauts, but said theories have not exactly
helped him beat the insanity accusations.
Early on Mess seriously claimed that the spacesuit
was possessed by the ghost of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who
was the first human being to die in a spaceflight (in order to save Yuri
Gagarin from said fate). This can of course be rejected outright, not just
because ghosts obviously do not exist, but also because Komarov died in 1967 and
he burned with his spacesuit into a carbonic crisp during atmospheric re-entry.
Next, Mess claimed that the suit was some sort of
secret failed experiment by the Soviets, perhaps actually being mechanical with
an AI built into it. While this explanation at least does not invoke
supernatural entities, it still has no evidence speaking for it, especially
given the fact that such technology would not have been possible to achieve in
the late twentieth century. This is nevertheless the favoured theory by the majority of conspiracy
theorists.
In the last years of his life, Mess speculated that
what his crew picked up may have actually been an alien lifeform, which, for
whatever nefarious purposes, imitated the appearance of a cosmonaut, perhaps
without knowing what the inside should look like.
The spacesuit has never been encountered again.
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