Living on the Space Station

Step 1 of 5

It laps the planet every 90 minutes.

Travelling at 28,000 km/h, the crew sees a sunrise and a sunset roughly every 45 minutes — sixteen of each per day.

Step 2 of 5

Nothing stays where you put it.

In free fall a dropped spoon does not drop. Everything must be strapped, velcroed or bagged, or it drifts off and turns up in a vent filter weeks later.

Step 3 of 5

Sleeping means being tied to a wall.

There is no up, so a bed is pointless. Crew zip into sleeping bags fixed to the wall of a phone-box-sized cabin — otherwise they drift into equipment.

Step 4 of 5

Bodies fall apart without gravity to fight.

Bones and muscles weaken fast when nothing is pushing on them. Crew exercise about two hours every single day just to hold on to what they have.

Step 5 of 5

It exists to do experiments you cannot do here.

Remove gravity and flames burn as spheres, metals mix in new ways, and cells behave differently. The station is a laboratory for what happens when weight is taken out of the equation.

It is the most expensive object ever built, at roughly $150 billion, and 15 countries share it.