Information programs often describe scientific experiments conducted at orbital stations. At the same time, a significant part of the audience forgets that astronauts are people too and have the same needs as everyone else. If for short-term flights hygiene problems are easily resolved, then staying in orbit for several months requires careful consideration of this issue.
Today, the answer to the question of how astronauts wash themselves in space is simple and unambiguous: not at all. At the same time, they comply with all hygiene standards. The Mir and Salyut 7 orbital stations had showers on board, which allowed the astronauts to wash themselves. However, the procedure itself was somewhat unusual, and the time required to prepare the cabin and subsequently clean it was unreasonably long.
Previously, showers like this were used
The lack of gravity leaves its mark on all hygiene procedures in space, but it should be noted that this is not a sanatorium, but a place for important research. It is problematic not only to wash and brush your teeth, but also to cut your hair or nails.
The use of a leave-in shower gel, which is a disinfectant composition resembling slightly soapy water, allows you to keep your body clean during a long stay on the orbital station. Leave-in shampoo is intended for washing hair. All formulations do not contain alcohol, since when it evaporates and enters the regeneration system, it will turn recycled water into vodka.
The procedure for washing your hair in space, described by American astronaut Karen Nyberg, who has long hair, is very simple:
Russian cosmonauts use a specially developed non-foaming shampoo “Aelita” to wash their hair, applied to their hair using a napkin, and then simply dry their hair with a towel. The body is cleansed using wipes soaked in a special gel.
Special shaving gels and edible toothpastes have been developed for use in zero-gravity conditions with a minimum amount of water. Female astronauts are allowed to take a limited amount of cosmetics with them. All this, as well as the mandatory change of clothes every three days, allow astronauts to maintain body hygiene at the proper level.
To understand how astronauts wash themselves in space, you need to remember that there is microgravity at the orbital station. Therefore, water does not flow there, but sticks around a person, and a flying hair can become a threat. Limited water supplies force astronauts to use them sparingly.
Soviet space stations were equipped with showers. They were plastic and sealed. To take a shower, the astronaut put on swimming goggles and took out a breathing tube. Water dust was sprayed onto it from above, which was sucked up from below by a special vacuum cleaner.
Currently, astronauts working on the International Space Station do not use showers at all. To wash their bodies or hands, astronauts use special wet wipes and leave-in gel. The astronaut rubs the body with gel or a damp cloth soaked in it, and then wipes himself with a damp towel.
It must be soaked with water every three days. After washing, hang the towel near the ventilation shaft, where it dries faster.
For their hair, workers on the International Space Station use a special shampoo that does not require rinsing with water.
The procedure includes several points:
It is important to remember that lost hair can pose a danger to plant workers. They can fly into their nose or eyes.
Everyday procedures on the International Space Station take on a number of nuances related to microgravity conditions. It can be described point by point:
Taking into account all these activities, going to the bathroom in orbit takes, on average, ten minutes longer than on the planet.
There is no sewage system in Cosmos, so the urine is mixed with other wastewater produced at the station. They are then purified into water that is once again suitable for drinking. Solid waste is placed in a tank, which is then sent overboard and burned in the upper atmosphere.
Washing astronauts' clothes would require too much water. That's why station workers wear it all the way. The dirty clothes are then placed in a trash container, which then burns in the upper atmosphere.
Station workers brush their teeth using regular toothbrushes, tubes of water and toothpaste. A paste has been developed for space flights that is safe to swallow. Therefore, astronauts either swallow water with toothpaste or spit it out into a special napkin. The water from it is squeezed out and made suitable for new use.
In 2010, several NASA videos appeared online, where astronauts demonstrate how they live and work in orbit. Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti's video shows how astronauts wash themselves in space. Another astronaut, Canadian Chris Hadfield, in his videos released in 2013, showed how they wash their hands and trim their nails in orbit.
Information programs often describe scientific experiments conducted at orbital stations. At the same time, a significant part of the audience forgets that astronauts are people too and have the same needs as everyone else. If for short-term flights hygiene problems are easily resolved, then staying in orbit for several months requires careful consideration of this issue.
Today, the answer to the question of how astronauts wash themselves in space is simple and unambiguous: not at all. At the same time, they comply with all hygiene standards. The Mir and Salyut 7 orbital stations had showers on board, which allowed the astronauts to wash themselves. However, the procedure itself was somewhat unusual, and the time required to prepare the cabin and subsequently clean it was unreasonably long.
The cabin was a sealed plastic cylinder, inside of which water dust was sprayed, which was subsequently removed with a special vacuum cleaner. The person had to wear swimming goggles and breathed through a special tube. It’s hard to imagine that you can get pleasure from this, although formally it can be called taking a shower. It is also important that the washing process took less time than preparing the cabin. Given the limited space on the space station and the transition to using wet wipes to keep the body clean, the shower stall on the Mir station was dismantled in 1990.
Previously, showers like this were used
The lack of gravity leaves its mark on all hygiene procedures in space, but it should be noted that this is not a sanatorium, but a place for important research. It is problematic not only to wash and brush your teeth, but also to cut your hair or nails
Employees of the Institute dealing with medical and biological problems (IMBP) have developed special tools that allow them to carry out procedures similar to taking a shower or bath. At the same time, the approach to solving the problem is significantly different between Russian and American developers. Russian hygiene products are specially designed taking into account space specifics, and Americans use those that can be purchased from them at any pharmacy.
The use of a leave-in shower gel, which is a disinfectant composition resembling slightly soapy water, allows you to keep your body clean during a long stay on the orbital station. Leave-in shampoo is intended for washing hair. All formulations do not contain alcohol, since when it evaporates and enters the regeneration system, it will turn recycled water into vodka.
The procedure for washing your hair in space, described by American astronaut Karen Nyberg, who has long hair, is very simple:
First, a small amount of warm water from a special bag is applied to the hair;
— Then a small amount of dry shampoo is spread over the head using a comb;
— Hair is dried with a towel. This ends the hair washing.
Karen Nyberg washes her hair
Russian cosmonauts use a specially developed non-foaming shampoo “Aelita” to wash their hair, applied to their hair using a napkin, and then simply dry their hair with a towel. The body is cleansed using wipes soaked in a special gel.
Special shaving gels and edible toothpastes have been developed for use in zero-gravity conditions with a minimum amount of water. Female astronauts are allowed to take a limited amount of cosmetics with them. All this, as well as the mandatory change of clothes every three days, allow astronauts to maintain body hygiene at the proper level.
If you drop a pencil from the table, it will fall to the floor because the Earth attracts it, like all other objects. And in space, the pencil will remain hanging in the air, because the Earth is far away. This is called weightlessness. When there is no gravity. In such conditions, people move smoothly, as if they were floating or even flying through the air.
With water it’s even more difficult. Water and other liquids generally behave very freely and unpredictably in space! In our house, water flows from the tap and from the shower - from top to bottom, because the Earth attracts them. In space, water can fly as it pleases, right “throughout the room,” or rather throughout the entire compartment of the spaceship. You won’t be able to take a shower, wash your face and brush your teeth like you would on earth in space. Therefore, astronauts use special tricks to “tame” the water and quickly become clean in the morning.
Toothpaste and brush are the same as on earth. But there is no washbasin on the ISS. This means there is nowhere to spit out the toothpaste. But even if there was a sink, let’s remember about weightlessness: if you spit out the remaining paste, it will not fly down, but will fly “for a walk” throughout the room. It will not be very pleasant to meet her - neither for you nor for your colleagues, that is, for other astronauts.
That's why some astronauts simply swallow toothpaste. This is the easiest thing, but actually harmful. If you do this often, you can get sick (toothpaste contains fluoride - from its excess in the body, the teeth will become covered with a harmful and unpleasant plaque).
But there is another simple way - just spit the paste directly into a towel, which quickly absorbs the water and paste.
Actually, there is no shower there. You can carefully pour a little water onto your hand or other part of the body and rub it slowly. This is possible because the water will “stick” slightly to your hand. But if you “spread” water on yourself, you will have to move slowly and make sure that the water does not “come off” and fly away. And in general, this is a very long time - if you wash like this in the morning, you can be late for work (yes, astronauts also rush to work - from one part of the space station to another).
To wash yourself quickly in space, it is better to take a towel, moisten it with water, apply special space soap to your body - this is how you get a fresh “shower”.
A special cosmo shampoo will also help wash your hair. There is no need to rinse it off with water - just wipe your head with a towel. All! A fresh, clean head is ready.
By the way, the phenomenon that helps water “stick” to different surfaces is called surface tension, it also exists on Earth, but it looks different - to see how it works, you can do a couple of experiments with a sheet of water and a glass (ask an adult to help you find and arrange them at home).
If you don’t want your nails to fly all over the compartment of the International Space Station, cut them near a special ventilation that attracts small “debris.” The ventilation will then need to be cleaned of nails with a vacuum cleaner (so as not to become clogged).
Samantha Cristoforetti talks about the Personal Care Corner on the International Space Station. Video.
Photo sources: www.prikol.ru / http://www.techcult.ru / trasyy.livejournal.com / vistanews.ru / vsefacty.com / fffail.ru
How did astronauts wash themselves before?
The first space flight, performed by Yuri Gagarin, lasted a little more than an hour and a half. Therefore, he did not have to take care of the bath in orbit. Currently, the average mission to the space station lasts about six months. Therefore, the designers of space stations had to take care of the soul for the astronauts. The first shower cabins were installed at the Salyut-7 and MIR orbital stations.
Cosmic Shower. Cosmonauts V.V. Lebedev and A.N. Berezovaya
These devices, according to the astronauts, were “a very funny attraction,” and washing in them was a whole ritual that lasted several hours (especially if you were not used to it) and ended with the laughter of the entire crew. The shower stall was made in the form of a cylinder from thick translucent plastic. Before getting into this plastic cylinder, the astronaut put on swimming goggles and took into his mouth a special tube into which air was supplied from the outside. Then the shower was hermetically sealed and the “fun” began. Unlike a regular shower, there were no streams of water pouring down from above, but rather a very fine mist of water was sprayed. And under the astronaut’s feet a very powerful vacuum cleaner was working, which pulled down water dust. This is done so that the air flow shapes the direction of the water. In conditions of weightlessness, water by itself does not flow down from a person, but simply sticks around him and does not move anywhere. In order for the air flow to wash away water from a person, the vacuum cleaner under the astronaut’s feet must have very high power. It was not possible to install a powerful vacuum cleaner on the space station, so in order to get rid of water on their bodies, the astronauts had to shake themselves off, just like dogs do after a bath. Then the soap solution ended up on the inner walls of the shower, and from there it flowed down to the vacuum cleaner. The procedure is repeated several times, each time with increasingly pure water. The astronaut is covered in water, he rubs it over his body, shakes himself off again, again the vacuum cleaner removes the liquid from the walls, and all over again. If you're tired of shaking yourself off, it means you're already clean.
How do astronauts wash themselves now?
On the currently functioning international space station, there is no shower at all. This, of course, does not mean that astronauts do not wash for six months. Instead of washing with water, astronauts use wet wipes specially made for them, which they use to wipe their skin daily. It is very important that the liquid with which the napkins are soaked does not contain alcohol (according to fire safety regulations) and is odorless, because even the most pleasant smell can become disgusting in a few weeks. You cannot take regular shampoos to wash your hair on a flight, since it will not be possible to wash off the foam in zero gravity. Our cosmonauts wash their hair with a special composition “Aelita”. It creates virtually no foam, and after washing your hair you just need to dry it with a towel. So everyone is very happy.
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