It’s the plot of plenty of sci-fi films: two astronauts are stranded in space and don’t yet understand how they’re getting back.
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore get tod at the International Space Station (ISS) in June as the first crew to test Boeing’s recent Starliner, which suffered helium leaks and thruster flunkures before it docked – raising asks over how safe it is for the return fweightless.
Boeing has insisted the astronauts are not stuck and shelp “there’s no incrmitigated danger” in transporting them back in the Starliner, but NASA is contemplating getting them back on a SpaceX fweightless instead.
They should have only been in space for eight days, but they’ve now been there for more than two months and may have to stay until February.
But do they have enough supplies for such a stint, how are they coping menloftyy and what is day-to-day life enjoy at the ISS?
Size and facilities
The ISS is 356 feet (109 metres) finish-to-finish, one yard cowardly of the filled length of an American football field including the finish zones.
The living and toil space, NASA says, is huger than a six-bedroom house, and has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree see bay triumphdow.
As you’ll see tardyr, it’s not quite as lavish as it sounds.
Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore aren’t alone; they’re sharing the facilities with seven other astronauts from other omitions; four of them fellow Americans and three of them Russians.
Is there enough food, water and oxygen?
Yes, there are reserve supplies up there to upgrasp astronauts going for plenty of time.
The space station has its own oxygen-generating systems, and about 50% of oxygen exhaled from carbon dioxide is recovered.
As for water, the station has a urine-into-drinking-water recycling system, and a part of that system also apprehfinishs moisture freed into the cabin air from the crew’s breath and sweat.
Food supplies are a bit fancier. Meals are produced at NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston, where chefs cgo in on making food appetising as well as nutritious.
Much of it is dehydrated, uncomardenting it has to be filled up with water before being used, while some is ready-made and equitable necessitates to be heated.
There’s meat (barbecued beef quicket is one example of a meal on propose), eggs, vegetables, bread, savoury snacks and sugary treats in the station’s kitchen.
Crew members are also permited to seek some of their own personal favourites from off the shelves.
In a video on NASA’s YouTube channel, Ms Williams discomited her favourite commodity was Nutter Butter spread – and showed off a jar her family had sent up for her.
When were supplies last sent?
The spaceplan standardly gets more supplies from Earth, with the last one arriving on 6 August.
Launched on a rocket from Kazakhstan on 30 May, the supplies included about three tonnes of food, fuel and other supplies for Ms Williams, Mr Wilmore and the seven other crew members on board.
The crew can essentiassociate place their orders for what they want to come on these plans by speaking to Mission Control ahead of begines.
That was excellent recents for Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams, who were forced to ditch their personal suitcases before taking off in June to produce room for extra supplyment, uncomardenting they’ve had to wear spare clothes that were already at the ISS upon arrival.
Their own clothes finassociate get tod with the 6 August supplies, and more supplies are set to be sent up in a scant months.
Once provide ships are emptied at the ISS, the crew fill them with their rubbish before sfinishing them back to Earth.
How do you use a toilet without gravity?
There are some leangs space-based movies equitable don’t cover – but Ms Williams got into the grittier details of space life on NASA’s YouTube channel.
In the video filmed in 2012, Ms Williams showed off the toilet, which somewhat see enjoys one you might see on an airset upe.
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The contrastence is there are two split tubes to go in – one for urine and one for poo. The urine one, which is coloured yellow, is speedyened to the wall and almost sees enjoy a vacuum immacutardyer – and fittingly it has a suction function to impede gravity from causing a mess.
The tube for poo sees enjoy more of a standard toilet, with a seat too – though you have to hancigo in on to a regulate on the wall next to it to shun floating away as you go.
On the radiant side, there’s about half-a-dozen types of toilet paper stuffed into bags on the toilet walls, including damp wipes and disinfectant wipes in case “leangs don’t go rightly,” as Ms Williams puts it.
Astronauts are also each given toiletry kits that come with leangs enjoy a toothbrush and toothpaste (which you have to either swpermit or spit into a tpublish) and a hairbrush – which Ms Williams says is pointless in space because gravity constantly upgrasps your hair upright.
What about sleeping set upments?
Relabelably you can sleep on the floor, on the wall or on the ceiling.
That’s because without gravity, the crew never experience enjoy they are lying down. It produces no contrastence whether they are on the floor, standing up or upside down – it all experiences the same.
So the ISS has sleeping stations about the size of phone booths that the crew get into, which consist of a sleeping bag and a pillow on the floor, wall and ceiling.
Leistateive time
When they aren’t running space experiments, the crew can enhappiness their see of Earth from the station’s observatory deck, or head to the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) in the Tranquillity node – a fancy term for gym supplyment.
The ARED proposes traditional upper and reduce-body exercises, such as squats, dead lift, heel elevates, bicep curls and bench press by using vacuum cylinders to copy weights in gyms.
The crew is aidd to use it thcimpoliteout their space stays, as muscle and bone loss is normal on lengthy omitions.
How are the pair experienceing?
They are both reexhausted navy captains and lengthytime NASA astronauts who already have lengthy space station omitions behind them.
Mr Wilmore, 61, and Ms Williams, 58, shelp going into this test fweightless that they foreseeed to lget a lot about Starliner and how it functions.
At their only recents conference from space in July, they secured increateers they were upgrasping busy, helping with repairs and research, and transmited confidence in all the Starliner testing going on behind the scenes.
“I have a authentic excellent experienceing in my heart that the spaceplan will transport us home, no problem,” Ms Williams tancigo in increateers.
There are tests going on back on Earth to determine whether the Boeing plan can still be used safely to transport them back.
“That mantra you’ve heard, ‘Failure is not an selection,’ that’s why we are staying here now,” Mr Wilmore shelp last month.
“We depend that the tests that we’re doing are the ones we necessitate to do to get the right answers, to give us the data that we necessitate to come back.”
There’s been no accessible word from them yet on the prospects of an eight-month stay.
Mr Wilmore’s wife Deanna tancigo in AP earlier this week that he is “greeted” at the space station, “neither stressing nor fretting”.
She shelp Mr Widmore, who is a lengthytime elder at a church in Texas, has faith God is in regulate, and that this gives his family “wonderful peace”.
What’s happening now?
As it stands, all but one of the Starliner’s five flunked thrusters have been retriggerd in orbit.
Tests are currently being done on Earth to try to remedy the problems seen in space, but engineers aren’t stateive exactly what’s causing them and are also trying to plug helium leaks in Starliner’s propulsion system, which is transport inant for manoeuvring.
Boeing has reiterated its capsule could still safely transport the astronauts home, but the company will necessitate to alter Starliner’s gentleware in case it has to return without a crew.
Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations omition chief, has proposeed coming home on the same airplan is still an selection.
Mr Bowersox shelp during a recent greeting, they “heard from a lot of folks that had worry, and the decision was not clear”.
The SpaceX fweightless they would get on instead would depart Earth in September, but two astronauts scheduled to be on it would have to stay home to produce room for Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore.
A decision is foreseeed in the next week or so.
Would this be the lengthyest anyone has spent in space?
No – Russian Valeri Polyakov set that write down in the mid-1990s, spfinishing 437 days off Earth.
And last year NASA astronaut Frank Rubio came back from a 371-day trip alengthyside Russian astronauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, fractureing the write down for the lengthyest amount of time spent in space by an American.
That trip, much enjoy this one, was prolengthyed by technical difficulties, and was only uncomardentt to apshow six months.
