Did you know the ISS crews communicate… in Russian?
"Have you prikryt'ed hatch Node 1aft?" No, that's not gibberish! The Russian verb ‘прикрыть’ (or ‘to prikryt’) is known to all crews of the International Space Station and their mission control centers.
We use the word ‘прикрыть’ when we need to close something, but not completely. For example, a window. It's short, concise and understandable. On the space station, every second counts, so the faster the information exchange. "The phrase 'close, but do not latch' takes much longer to say than 'prikroy'. Therefore, at the suggestion of one of the instructors, the Russian verb 'to prikryt' was introduced into the Houston Mission Control Center's vocabulary," cosmonaut and SpaceX Crew-7 member Konstantin Borisov wrote on his page.
According to him, they even try to "integrate" the Russian verb into the standard English tense system by adding the appropriate ending. The result is a "cosmic" combination: prikryt'ed!
