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Maintenance and Repair Skills Course for Pablo Alvarez and Marco Sieber successfully completed!
04/03/26
Maintenance and repair activities are crucial on the International Space Station, as it reaches its extended life. Maintenance and repairs are usually carefully planned, trained and performed according to procedures and with real time ground support. However, unplanned maintenance and repair may also be required on short notice or with no available support. In both cases, the knowledge and skills of the crewmembers are critical to enable a fast and safe recovery of systems and payloads.
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Marco Sieber and Pablo Alvarez Fernandez successfully completed the 7-day maintenance and repair skills course, where they learned and practiced mechanical, electrical & electronics, computer, hydraulic & pneumatic skills. They learned about all available tools and did practice different techniques of troubleshooting applied on a rack training model.
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They have been challenged with off-nominal situations, forcing them to analyse the problem, combine and use their newly acquired knowledge and skills to devise possible solutions, without ready-made procedures. Even when solutions weren’t immediately apparent, they demonstrated consistent professionalism and determination!
More implementations are planned to further increase the skills and self-confidence of European astronauts when facing off nominal situations on ISS and beyond.
The Maintenance and Repair Skills Course is provided by Space Application Services & Hagen Engineering to Astronauts, for the ESA European Astronaut Centre.