Just hanging

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst training in the Orlan spacesuit

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst enters a swimming pool at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow, Russia. Alexander spends many hours training underwater to recreate the feeling of weightlessness in space.

Alexander is flight engineer for Expedition 40/41, which will be launched to the International Space Station in May 2014 on a long-duration mission to run science experiments and maintain humankind’s space base.