Life on a space station

During their stay on the International Space Station (ISS) astronauts have to continue living and

working in an environment that is very different to that here on Earth. They still need to keep clean, go

to the bathroom, eat and drink and keep fit and healthy. The conditions of weightlessness on the ISS

mean they need to adapt these activities.

Personal hygiene
The ISS is orbiting 400 kilometres from Earth and everything needs to be taken there from Earth. This

means that the astronauts have to conserve resources such as water and food and waste needs to

be kept to a minimum.

In this series of video clips, ESA astronaut Frank De Winne and some of his fellow crew members,

explain how they live on board the International Space Station. Attached to these video clips (filmed

during the OasISS mission) are some short lessons that educators can use in the classroom.

Personal Hygiene
 Hygiene is important, even on the ISS
Whether you are at home, school or vacation one thing you will need to do everyday is to look after

your personal hygiene. What does this mean? Well, washing yourself, brushing your teeth, using the

toilet and even putting on reasonably fresh, clean clothes.

Even on the International Space Station (the ISS), astronauts need to carry out personal hygiene. In

such a small space that you have to share with up to 13 people at times, things can become very

unpleasant if someone is not taking care of business! Lets start with the hygiene basics:

Teeth
 Looking at teeth
Why do we have teeth and what do they do? How to take care of our teeth? Why is this important?

Write down all the reasons why you think teeth are useful.

Take a mirror and have a good look at your teeth. How many different kinds of teeth can you see and

feel? Sharp teeth in the front of your mouth are called incisors. Pointed teeth next to them are called

canines and the wider teeth with bumps are called molars.

Count how many teeth you have. Draw a picture of your teeth as you can see from the mirror.

In Space

Astronauts brush their teeth in the normal way as you do, but there is a difference! In the first video

clip, look at how everything ‘floats’ around. This is because on the ISS there is no weight pulling

things downwards like on earth.

The Space Station is orbiting the Earth so fast (28000 kilometres per hour) at the correct speed and

direction; it does not fall down to Earth but keeps falling around the Earth. Because it is falling

everything inside it is weightless. So everything floats! Even water and toothpaste.

The toothpaste astronauts use can be swallowed after brushing (edible toothpaste) and the mouth is

then cleaned with a wet wipe. The astronauts have to brush with their mouth as closed as possible to

prevent the toothpaste floating out!

Going to the bathroom on the ISS

ISS toilet
So if everything ‘floats’ in space, then how do you go to the toilet? There is a special toilet on the ISS

(situated on the Russian module Zvezsda). There will be another one which will be situated on the

American module – as the number of crew on the ISS will go up.

The astronauts have to strap themselves in to prevent floating off. Instead of a flush toilet there is a

suction tube which carries the waste away in an air stream down a hole. The solid gets compressed
and stored for disposal later. The urine is connected and later recycled. Certainly a strange way to go

to the bathroom!

Eating and drinking on the ISS

As well as exercise, nutrition plays an important role in maintaining the health of the astronauts. Food

is not just used for providing sufficient number of calories for working but meal times are important

social occasions for people so far away from their families and friends.

The food is specially prepared because weightlessness requires adjustments to prevent the food from

floating off a plate. Some types of food must also be eaten to counter the effects of adaptation to the

space environment.

Astronauts get to choose which meals they would like so long as the nutritional values and calories

are kept within the approved requirements: 2800 calories per day. The food trays are prepared on the

ground for each astronaut and delivered to the ISS before he/she arrives. These are stored in one of

the modules and marked. Red food trays contain foods from Russia and blue trays contain food from

the American/European countries. The food has to be specially treated so that it can last a long time

and is low in mass.

Astronauts use the trays as plates and everything has to be either squeezed out of a tube or bag. Can you
imagine what would happen if the drink and crumbs were allowed to escape and floated wherever they
wanted? Look at all the electric equipment around… yes, disaster!
It is very expensive to carry all this mass on to the station so everything has to be very light and easily stored.

Exercise and Fitness

The human body evolved on Earth, in a gravity field. Absence of weight leads to health problems

such as bone and muscle loss. Weightlessness also makes it harder to do even small tasks.

The astronauts have to anchor themselves firmly, or they would drift away - even using the computer

becomes difficult. Space walks can be exhausting and put unusual strain on muscles. This means

that astronauts have to take time to exercise and keep themselves fit and healthy to carry out their job

on the ISS and to return to Earth in good shape.

On board there is a treadmill and an exercise bicycle (without tyres!). Astronauts have to do at least 2

hours of exercise per day to keep in good shape.

There are also various pulleys and ropes which are similar to a gym on earth where they can do

resistance training all which help maintain the condition of their bones and muscles – also very

important as when they return back to gravity on Earth their physical condition is maintained as good

as possible.

The concept of a "day" aboard an orbiting spacecraft is a little abstract: every 24

hours, astronauts on board the ISS will experience 15 dawns as the station
speeds around the world. But human beings have been conditioned by millions of
years of evolution to a 24-hour daily cycle, and so-called circadian rhythms of
waking and sleeping are hard-wired into our brains and bodies. So astronauts
work and sleep to fixed schedules that match these ancient rhythms. Any other
arrangement would soon have crews living in a state of permanent jet lag.
The crew are awoken by an alarm each "morning" - perhaps interrupting the dreams of

weightlessness that many astronauts experience - and stir out of their beds to begin their day. Most

astronauts would have hooked their sleeping bags to a wall the night before. Sleep spots need to be

carefully chosen - somewhere in line with an ventilator fan is essential. The airflow may make for a

draughty night's sleep but warm air does not rise in space so astronauts in badly-ventilated sections
end up surrounded by a bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide. The result is oxygen starvation:

at best, they will wake up with a splitting headache, gasping for air...

A few brave souls try floating free, but their sleep is likely to be interrupted by collision with an air filter

that is trying to suck them into its grill. Along with other station equipment, all these fans and air filters

make for a noisy night - some astronauts have compared duty on a space station to living inside a

giant vacuum cleaner - so some of the crew prefer to sleep with earplugs. But most eventually

acclimatise to the noise, just as people on Earth get used to living on a main road. The background

sound of these systems dedicated to keeping them alive actually seems reassuring.

Once stirred, the astronauts tend to adopt a foetus-like posture as they move weightlessly about the

station. Sometimes referred to unflatteringly as the "simian hunch", it seems to be the natural human

attitude in microgravity; perhaps it really is an echo of the weightless months that every growing

embryo spends floating in its mother's womb.

Time for bed

The crew dress as quickly as they can: no easy task when your limbs float out at odd angles. They

wear disposable clothes, replacing them once every three days: there are no washing machines in

space. Astronauts wash with wet towels, there is no shower on the International Space Station.

Even in space ....

For the men on board, wet shaving remains a laborious task. Surface tension generally keeps water

and shaving cream stuck to an astronaut's face, while cream and stubble stick to the razor blade until

wiped on a towel which is then rolled up to prevent the deposits escaping. Electric shaving is also

possible, although it has to be done next to a suction fan to ensure the hairs don't float away. Many

male astronauts prefer to shave as little as possible, and all agree that it's one area in which their

female colleagues have all the advantages.

Then comes the day's first of three meals. Space food has vastly improved in taste and variety since

the purely freeze-dried days of the Apollo missions. But space meals are prepared and eaten under

the same basic restrictions: food and drink has to be somehow confined, or else it will wander off

around the station. This is obviously messy and unhygienic; but if free-falling food gets into station

equipment, it can also be dangerous. So drinks and soup are served in plastic bags and sipped with
straws. But with a little care, astronauts can eat more solid dishes with a knife and fork - magnets

keep the utensils from floating away from the dining table. Prolonged microgravity dulls tastebuds, so

spicy food is usually a crew favourite.

After eating, astronauts settle down to the assigned tasks of the day, either supervising experiments

or performing routine maintenance on station equipment. It takes a complex array of machinery to

keep people alive and well in orbit. Daily, each human breathes the equivalent of 0.9 kg of liquid

oxygen - enough air to fill a 3.5 cubic metre room - and drinks a total of 2.7 kg of water. To minimize

on resupply needs, the ISS life-support systems are designed to recycle as much as possible. Waste

water from urine and moisture condensed from the air is either purified and reused direct, or broken

down by electrolysis to provide fresh oxygen. Carbon dioxide 'scrubbers' chemically remove that toxic

gas from the air.

One substance that is not recycled on ISS is solid human waste: it is collected, compressed and

stored for disposal. The space toilet that does the collecting has a somewhat intimidating

appearance. But it is a huge improvement on the sanitary arrangements that earlier astronauts had to

endure. When power failures on Mir forced cosmonauts to fall back on emergency plastic bags,

morale plummeted until their orbiting "convenience" was back on line.

Space toilets do not use water. Instead, astronauts must first fasten themselves to the toilet seat,

which is equipped with spring-loaded restraining bars to ensure a good seal. A lever operates a

powerful fan and a suction hole slides open: the air stream carries the waste neatly away. Some crew

members find the toilet difficult to get used to. As well as the device itself, they have to accustom

themselves to the disconcerting fact that their bowels actually float inside their bodies - like the rest of

their internal organs and of course everything else on board.

 Umberto Guidoni exercises in-flight
A less stressful daily routine involves exercise. The human body loses muscle and bone in

weightlessness; a few hours of daily exercise helps to keep some tone in muscles that would

otherwise see little use. Exercise also helps relieve the so-called "space snuffles", caused when body

fluids, no longer tugged downward by gravity, accumulate in the head. Like the old Russian Mir

station, ISS has a treadmill; it also has an exercise bike. Astronauts have to strap themselves down to

the exercise machines, of course: unrestrained, their own efforts would make them float away.

Generally, days in orbit are busy - and when heavy equipment has to be moved, they can be

exhausting, too. Just because a crate of scientific gear is weightless doesn't mean that it has lost its

mass. Astronauts have to pull and push against inertia, and they are often working in strange

positions for which human muscles are not well adapted.

Still, the crew will normally have some free time before bed. These hours are precious: this is when

they might write emails home, watch DVDs, or transmit just for fun on ham radio. People on Earth can
do these things too, of course. But ground dwellers cannot hope to share the most popular leisure

pursuit in space: just watching the Earth turning below. Astronauts swear that the view is never dull.

Astronauts living and working in space have the same hygiene needs as people on Earth. They wash
their hair, brush their teeth, shave and go to the bathroom. However, because of the microgravity
environment, astronauts take care of themselves in different ways.

Astronauts wash their hair with a “rinseless” shampoo that was originally developed for hospital
patients who were unable to take a shower.

Many astronauts have a personal hygiene kit. The kit contains the personal hygiene items each
astronaut has chosen to take. Personal preferences, such as the brand of toothpaste, are
accommodated if possible. Dental hygiene is basically the same as on Earth.

Because of microgravity, the space station toilet is more complex than what people use on Earth. The
astronauts have to position themselves on the toilet seat using leg restraints. The toilet basically
works like a vacuum cleaner with fans that suck air and waste into the commode. Each astronaut has
a personal urinal funnel that has to be attached to the hose’s adapter. Fans suck air and urine
through the funnel and the hose into the wastewater tank.