Har Deshur: Pseudocosmonaut

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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