Have you ever been on a really long trip,
and it felt like it took forever to get where
you’re going?
Well, how would you like to take a long trip
into space?
That might sound like something you’ve read
about in a book or seen in a movie, but for
a select few people, it’s real life!
I’m talking about the astronauts who live
in space for months at a time, on the International
Space Station.
The International Space Station -- or ISS
for short -- is in orbit above Earth.
Astronauts live and work up there doing science
experiments and learning about life in space.
To get there, astronauts are carried up into
space by rockets.
And when they go home, they ride in space
capsules that fall back to Earth.
Let’s take a closer look.
Those big, flat shiny things are solar panels,
and they provide energy for the space station.
They capture sunlight and they turn it into
electricity.
The space station uses that electricity to
power lights and computers and everything
else that makes the ISS go.
This is a robot arm.
Astronauts inside the station use this arm,
by remote control, to fix things on the outside
of the ISS.
Although it might not look like it, the space
station is kind of like a big house.
It has 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen
-- which astronauts call a galley -- and they
even have a laboratory, just like we do at
the fort.
But as you can imagine, life on the space
station is a lot different than it is back
home on Earth.
For one thing, all of the water that astronauts
use has to be flown up by rockets.
Since it’s so hard to get up there, water
is only used for drinking and eating.
So astronauts don’t take baths or showers
with water.
Instead, they wash up with special washcloths.
But probably the biggest difference is that
there’s much less gravity up in the space
station than there is here on Earth.
Instead of sticking to the ground like we
do at home, astronauts up there just float
around!
So, in a way, it’s a lot easier for the
astronauts to move around, because there’s
less gravity.
But after a couple of days in space, their
muscles actually get weak.
So astronauts on the space station have to
exercise at least two hours every day to give
their muscles a workout.
But the rest of the time, the astronauts are
conducting experiments!
They’ll study plants to see how they grow
in space, and they’ll study small animals,
like fish, to see how their muscles do in
low gravity.
They even study how robots work in space.
Say hello to Robonaut 2.
He’s a robot, like Squeaks, who lives on
the space station full time -- He’s on board
so astronauts can see if robots work as well
in space as they do on Earth.
R2, as his friends call him, can use tools,
and even go on a spacewalk by himself.
Spacewalks are when astronauts leave the space
station in a spacesuit, to do work on the
outside of the station.
But they don’t do them very often.
Spacewalks are only for when astronauts need
to fix things on the ISS or to gather information
for experiments.
So life on the International Space Station
is hard work, and it’s really different
than life at home.
But if you ask me, the astronauts who get
to go there are pretty lucky -- because they
actually get to live in space!
Thanks for joining us on SciShow Kids.
Maybe one day, if you work really hard, you
can go to the ISS!
See you next time.
