Life on International Space Station awaiting Türkiye's first space traveler

By Tugba Altun

The crew of the Axiom-3 spaceship, including Türkiye's first space traveler, is expected to dock with the International Space Station at approximately 5:15 a.m. EST on Saturday.

Many experiences await them, ranging from zero gravity to scientific experiments, all the while living in close quarters with seven other crewmates.

Anadolu detailed the aspects of life on the orbiting station, while the space travelers are en route to the ISS for 36 hours.

The Ax-3 crew is made up of Spanish-American mission leader Michael Lopez-Alegria, Italian Air Force pilot Walter Villadei, Marcus Wandt from Sweden on behalf of the European Space Agency, and Col. Alper Gezeravci, the first Turkish space traveler.

The crew, housed in the SpaceX Dragon, attached to the Falcon-9 rocket, successfully launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in the US state of Florida at 4:49 p.m. EST on Thursday.

On the space station, they will live on canned food and recycled water and end their days in sleeping bags. But it is completely worth the wonderful views of space, and especially, of Earth.

The ISS contains six sleeping compartments, two bathrooms, a gym and a window that provides a 360-degree view.

The Expedition 70 crew, which began their mission on the ISS on Sept. 27, includes Andreas Mogensen, Jasmin Moghbeli, Furukawa Satoshi, Loral O'Hara, Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

They will welcome the Ax-3 crew once they rendezvous with the ISS.

The space travelers will witness the Earth from space and experience happiness and the stress of life on the space station.

- Importance of exercise, basic needs explained

The first and most important factor that awaits the astronauts on the ISS, and in space, is zero gravity.
The space travelers learned to live “floating” and acclimatize to zero gravity by training underwater on Earth, therefore, they need to exercise for two hours every day on the ISS to maintain their bodies.

Otherwise, they may face muscle and bone loss, as being a space traveler requires the ability to work under stress and pressure, a strong mind, as well as a healthy physical integrity.

Consuming food and drinks in zero gravity is also quite unusual, since liquid disperses and floats in the air, which is why those commodities are stored in special packages.

Systems have been developed to meet basic nutritional needs, as well as special preferences for life in space, however, most food is still canned and contained in proprietary packaging.

There are already more than 300 rations of food available and space travelers can also bring food of their choice.

Almost all the food was prepared a year or two ago in the form of canned, bagged, irradiated or frozen food.

- 1 Day of Space Travelers

According to the general working discipline, the space travelers will start experiments upon arrival to the ISS.

Throughout the two-week period, the crew will start the day at 0600GMT (1 a.m. EST), as is tradition on the orbiting station.

After breakfast and socializing with crewmates, they will meet with mission control to discuss the day’s schedule and missions.

During the day, they will exercise for at least two hours and in the evening, they will have dinner after they have already done their work for the day.

At 2200GMT (5 p.m. EST), they will retreat to their sleeping compartment and finish the day in sleeping bags.

Unlike on Earth, one cannot make physical contact with sleeping bags since they simply float due to zero gravity, therefore, the term “lying down” does not apply in the strict sense, however, they can sleep upside down.

- Recyclization allows water to be reused

Water is extracted from breathing, bodily waste, and general water from space travelers, which is then purified and used as the main source of liquid on the ISS. Ninety-three percent of the total water is recycled, since each liter of water externally brought to the orbiting station costs a fortune.

The water recycling system reduces the crew's dependence on spacecraft-borne water by 65%, according to NASA.

*Writing by Emir Yildirim