It’s ten years since the first crew entered the
International Space Station 220 miles above
Earth. But what is it like aboard a big tin can 5
travelling at 17,500mph?
Ian Sample
24 October, 2010

1. At 6.41pm this Thursday, a small bright light will appear low in the night sky before vanishing in the darkness. Few people will notice and even fewer will care, but for a handful of souls that speck on the horizon is a place called home. What looks like a wandering star in the heavens is sunlight reflecting off the International Space Station.

2. With more than a decade of construction now coming to an end, astronauts can finally look forward to using the space station to the full. If the experiences of those who helped build and man the station are anything to go by, they are in for an extraordinary time. “I still can’t believe what I’ve seen sometimes,” says Piers Sellers, a NASA astronaut, who took part in the most recent shuttle mission to the station in May. “Often it all comes back to me in dreams.”

3. Next week, NASA will commemorate ten years of life on the space station (the first residents arrived on 2 November 2000), but fewer than 200 people have first-hand knowledge of life on board. It takes two days to get to the space station. The station flies at an altitude of 220 miles or so (that’s more than 30 times the 9 cruising height of a jumbo jet), but is travelling at a speed of 17,500mph. Before astronauts can clamber aboard, they first have to chase it down and pull alongside.

4 The shuttle approaches the space station from below. The docking procedure is as slow and cautious as you might expect given the price tags of the spacecraft involved: $1.7bn (£1.1bn) for a shuttle and around $100bn (£64bn) for the crews. “You see these pale faces on the other side and they’re always excited to see you. Sometimes it’s been three months since they’ve seen anyone else,” says Sellers.

5. In all, the living space on the station amounts to the equivalent of roughly one-and-a-half Boeing 747s. Storage facilities, laboratories and siderooms give astronauts room to go about their business, do experiments and operate the space station’s two robotic arms. The space station has a permanent crew of six and there is a subtle art to moving around without crashing into anything.

6. In time, people hone the skill and can fly down the length of the station, straight as an arrow, without touching anything, except with their fingertips. People sit in mid air, tapping away at a computer, with only a toe hooked under a wall strap to anchor themselves.

7. Living in a weightless environment does curious things to the body. On their first day or two in space, some astronauts feel queasy. Many astronauts lose much of their sense of smell. Taste is another casualty. “Nothing tastes like it does on Earth. It all tastes like cardboard,” says Sellers. “We get through gallons of Tabasco. sauce.”

8. With no gravity exerting itself on the body, both bones and muscles begin to waste. For every month in space, astronauts lose around 2% of their bone mass. On long stays aboard the space station, crews spend at least two hours a day exercising.

9. It takes the space station one and a half hours to fly around the planet, making for 16 complete laps a day. For those on board, the visual effect is spectacular. After 45 minutes of daylight, a dark line appears on the planet, dividing Earth into night and day. For a couple of seconds, the space station is bathed in a coppery light and then complete darkness. Another 45 minutes later, and just as abruptly, the sun rises to fill the station with brilliant light again.

10. It is the sight of our planet that takes the breath away. On board, the best vantage point is from the cupola whose six windows look down on a panoramic view of Earth. But for the really exceptional vistas, you need to step outside. Space walkers see whole continents, mountain ranges, cities, aircraft contrails and the wakes of ships crossing the oceans.

11. Most shuttle missions take astronauts to the space station for two weeks or so, during which every working day is intense. As soon as the wake-up music begins, printers start chattering out instructions for the day ahead. Almost every hour is scheduled, with crew members’ tasks and the tools they will need planned by logistics experts on the ground making sure no one gets in anyone’s way.

12. Short visits to the space station are easier to cope with psychologically than longer ones. Frank de Winne, a Belgian astronaut and former test pilot, spent nine days on the space station in 2002 and returned for a six-month trip last year, when he became the first European commander of the space station. “If you are there for a week or two, you are basically on a high the whole time. It’s not the same when you’re there for six months. Things that are difficult in the short term, such as not having a shower or any fresh fruit, become part of normal life. The things you really miss are close contact with your wife, your kids and your family and friends,” he says. The crews are not completely cut off from those back home and use email and the station’s phone to get in touch when there is time.

13. The space station will be orbiting Earth for at least another five years; probably much longer – possibly until 2028. For those who built the space station, seeing its bright light shooting across the sky at night evokes feelings few others will understand. “You can go out on a quiet night and see it flying over and you think, my goodness, I was there, I helped put that together,” says Sellers. “Everybody here feels they own a little piece of it. It’s a lasting achievement.”

© Guardian News & Media 2010
First published in The Guardian, 24/10/10