Think astronauts are always on duty on the International Space Station? Well you’d be wrong. Even astronauts get time off in space, and holiday, says the German Aerospace Center’s Volker Schmid.
DW: Astronauts are expected to conduct a wealth of experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). They also have a lot of other tasks, like maintenance work. So how is a working day organized in space? Do astronauts get free time, as we do on Earth?
Volker Schmid: An astronaut’s working day is not so different from that on Earth. Of course, it is a unique environment, but they work eight hours, sometimes nine or ten hours if a job requires overtime, just like in normal life.
Then there are eight hours of sleep and two hours of sports every day. That’s important to ensure an astronaut’s muscles, bones and metabolism function well.
The rest consists of eating, body care and social contacts, like calling home, joining a video conference, or watching a movie in their free time. Sometimes there are briefings with colleagues after work. But on the whole it’s not so different, except that the pace is determined by the planners on the ground. They make sure that all of the 300 experiments on the Horizons mission [Ed.: the current ISS mission for which Schmid is responsible] can be carried out as well as possible.
And besides the science, research, eating, body care and leisure what else is there to do?
There is all the traffic with the transport vehicles that arrive every now and then. They have to be unloaded and loaded. The cargo needs to be repackaged, installed, switched on, and checked to make sure it’s running smoothly. It’s all part of everyday life.
Read More: On the ISS, ‘Astro Alex’ says he’s found he has space ‘muscle memory’
And how many days a week do they work?
It’s like on Earth: Saturday is half a working day. The other half is reserved for cleaning the spaceship. Sunday is free. And there are holidays too.
For more read the full of article at The Dw
