Training at Star City's pool - European astronaut Andre Kuipers, wearing a 100 kg Orlan...

Training at Star City's pool - European astronaut Andre Kuipers, wearing a 100 kg Orlan space suit, trains in the Star City pool. The swimming pool at the Gagarin training center near Moscow is 23 metres in diameter with a modular depth of up to 12 metres; it hosts full-scale models of different space station elements to prepare cosmonauts for different operations in space. ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers, from The Netherlands, 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. Wearing a Russian 100 - kg Orlan spacesuit is hoisted into the pool of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory for an underwater simulated EVA. 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. The spacesuit buoyancy provides a simulated weightlessness for astronaut trainees