After the successful arrival of Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and his colleagues from the “crew-6” crew to the International Space Station, the duration of the mission raises many questions about the details of the daily life of the mission crew, apart from the experiments and scientific research that they will conduct.
The mission takes a full 6 months; So, it is natural that questions come to mind about how to sleep on board the International Space Station, the nature of food, personal hygiene care, and other living details.
At the outset, it must be noted the radical difference between the living conditions on Earth and the reality of the lives of astronauts who live in microgravity with a small amount of water, and the many challenges that require several measures to ensure the success of the space mission and the safety of the astronauts.
The process of transporting water from Earth to the International Space Station takes place via spacecraft, and the amount of water is determined in a deliberate manner, and this limitation is due to the fact that each additional gram carried by the spacecraft will consume a greater amount of fuel.
personal cleanliness
In light of this limited amount of water, some may ask about how the showering process aboard the International Space Station is one of the main challenges in long missions. For hair, a special shampoo is used that does not need to be rinsed. Rather, the hair and scalp are massaged with it and then removed using the towel designated for this process.
As for “cleaning clothes” during the flight, the fact is that the astronauts do not resort to washing the used clothes permanently, but rather they are disposed of after being used for long periods of up to about a month.
Where there are no devices for washing and spreading traditional clothes in space, and here it must be noted that the need to change clothes in space does not resemble the reality lived on Earth by virtue of many factors, most notably the difficulty of dirty clothes in the first place.
In the same context, astronauts use toothpaste to clean their teeth that can be swallowed after brushing, and NASA installed a toothpaste that replaces lost minerals in bones and teeth during their stay in space, and the agency suggested merging brushes consisting of calcium, hydrogen, phosphate, and water in a gel solution to form hydroxyapatite in 1974.
Dental care has become important in space due to the lack of a dentist, as the feeling of tooth pain may cause the astronaut to be less efficient in performing his duties, as happened with astronaut Yuri Romanenko, who had a toothache on the Salyut 6 flight in 1973.
As for taking care of appearance in space, astronauts do not need to cut their hair on short missions, but they are sometimes forced to shave and cut their hair on long missions. They are emptied into special waste bags to be disposed of either by burning in the Earth’s atmosphere or stored for study. The same applies to nails that are cut with regular nail scissors next to an airway to be disposed of later.
sleep
Sleeping is one of the most challenging astronauts face under conditions of zero gravity, as the astronaut has sleeping bags attached to the wall, inside which there are ropes that connect to the astronaut’s body.
There are openings for the hands, a valve for ventilation of the legs, and a hood for the head. The Russian astronaut, Ivan Wagner, describes the process of sleeping on the International Space Station as similar to sleeping in a sleeping bag inside the trekking tent, with the difference that the lack of gravity does not allow lying on the sides and on the arms.
Instead of the sounds of nature, we only hear the noise of propellers. The astronauts exercise for two hours a day to strengthen their muscles and improve their physical fitness to deal with daily tasks in an ideal way, as the astronauts use three devices that enable them to exercise appropriately for their bodies. The first is like a bike, the second is like a treadmill, and the third is a resistance exercise device that is somewhat similar to weight lifting machines.
According to scientific standards, astronauts eat liquid meals that differ in the degree of their viscosity, and according to the Food Systems Laboratory in “NASA”, it is necessary for astronauts to take regular vitamin and mineral tablets, and a liquid meal, in addition to various food dishes.
The menu on board the International Space Station includes appetizers, such as soup and cheese, and the main meal, which includes fish, chicken or beef meat, and desserts, in addition to drinks, such as tea and juices, as space travel meals are usually in the form of paste in tubes.
Astronauts work on board the International Station for 9 and a half hours a day, during which they conduct scientific tests, exercises, and instrument maintenance. If we exclude the scheduled time for sleep, we find that the remaining free time for astronauts does not exceed a few hours a week.
This includes meal time and general hygiene, but even with this busy schedule, astronauts find some time to have fun in the zero-gravity environment of the International Station. The list of leisure activities includes watching movies, reading books, or taking pictures of the planet through the windows of the station’s dome. .