How NASA's Female Astronauts Wash Hair, Exercise and Eat in Space | Marie Claire
Blast off and spend 24 hours in space with the astronauts who completed NASA's first ever all-female spacewalk! Christina Koch and Jessica Meir share an intimate look at their out-of-this-world routine on the International Space Station, revealing their health and hygiene habits, their daily assignments, and how they keep themselves entertained as they orbit the Earth.
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00:00 [Music]
00:08 We're over a lot of ocean right now.
00:10 Yeah, we're over the Pacific.
00:11 We're going to come over the tip of South America.
00:16 Awesome.
00:17 [Music]
00:37 Hi Marie Claire.
00:38 I'm Christina Koch of NASA.
00:41 And I'm Jessica Meir.
00:43 [Music]
00:52 We're both NASA astronauts living on board the International Space Station.
00:55 And I've actually been here since March 15.
00:57 I think it's somewhere almost 250 days, something like that.
01:01 That's about 200 days longer than me.
01:03 And actually tomorrow will be my 50th day on the International Space Station.
01:06 The last 50 has been the best time since NASA's been here.
01:09 It's been pretty amazing being up here together with both of us having worked
01:13 and been friends together and colleagues for so long.
01:16 One of the highlights of my 50 days thus far was the spacewalk that Christina and I conducted together.
01:21 We were doing a series of spacewalks to upgrade some batteries.
01:24 And then something went a little bit awry with the battery channel.
01:27 And we had to do an unplanned spacewalk to replace the battery charge discharge unit.
01:32 The ground team planned for that in only a couple days.
01:35 That spacewalk was also the highlight of my mission.
01:37 And to be a part of both professionally and personally, of course,
01:40 is just an extraordinary experience.
01:42 The views are amazing.
01:44 On board, our days consist mostly of maintenance of the space station and doing science
01:51 to basically benefit life on Earth and also to further our goals in exploration.
01:55 A lot of the work we're doing here on long-duration spaceflight is going to inform
01:59 the future missions that we do back to the Moon and also on to Mars.
02:04 Outside of our workday, which is about 12 hours long in and of itself,
02:08 we have meals with our friends and we have other hobbies we can do.
02:12 Keep in touch with people on Earth, look out the window, take pictures, read, watch movies.
02:18 This is my favorite window to read by.
02:20 You can usually find me here on Sunday mornings.
02:23 Sometimes it's sunnier, though, and that's a little bit nicer.
02:26 We don't have a ton of time for free time, but what we do, we make the best of it.
02:30 I think the real joy about living up here is getting to know your crewmates
02:33 and getting to spend time with them.
02:35 We hope you enjoy our day aboard the International Space Station.
02:38 A very important part of our daily routine on the International Space Station is exercise.
02:45 This ensures that we keep our muscles and bones healthy and that we can come back
02:50 from our missions back to Earth still in a healthy state.
02:57 So this is our resistive exercise device where we can actually achieve the same thing
03:04 as lifting weights would be on Earth in space, in microgravity.
03:07 Just like on the ground, we have to wash our hair in space, too,
03:12 so I'll show you a little bit about what that looks like in microgravity.
03:16 So we get some of our drinking water in a pouch like this, a little initial rinse.
03:23 Basically I'm just squeezing the water out of this drink bag, as you can see here,
03:28 and I'm just getting that all in my hair.
03:32 One of the things that's interesting up here, when I would work out on the ground,
03:37 if I'm running or biking or doing any kind of exercise, I always have my hair back,
03:41 so it doesn't get in my face, of course.
03:43 Up here, actually, you don't need to do that since it never gets in your face.
03:46 So often I'll just leave it down, but when I say down, up here,
03:51 it usually ends up being mostly up, up like this,
03:55 but it stays out of your face while you're working out, so that's all you need.
03:59 So I'm just working all the water through here, getting a nice little rinse,
04:05 and of course, because I'm in space,
04:08 I can also do it with what looks like being upside down to you.
04:15 You can feel like Spider-Man when we jump up to the ceiling like this up here.
04:20 Just going to get a little bit of shampoo in here, especially at the roots,
04:23 and give it a bit of a scrub.
04:28 First I'm going to get some of it out with this towel.
04:31 Now we'll give it a rinse.
04:34 Perhaps the most important part of washing the hair is getting rid of all the extra hair that's falling out,
04:41 so I don't leave it around all over the space station for my crewmates to find.
04:45 Some people have described it a bit like you're floating along and suddenly you get hit in the face
04:50 by something that feels like a spider web because somebody's long hair is just floating there in front of you
04:55 and you can't see it.
04:57 Okay, I'm ready for my conditioner.
05:00 Work some of that in here, and this is just a leave-in conditioner, and that's it.
05:04 That's how you wash your hair in space.
05:06 Not that complicated.
05:12 So today we're going to harvest the mizuna lettuce that we've been growing for about the past month.
05:17 This is the fourth iteration of the veggie experiment, and this one is in particular looking at different light levels.
05:22 So we have two different wavelengths of light.
05:24 As you can see, this one is a bit more red on the top, and this one on the bottom is a little bit more blue.
05:29 So today, Christina and I are harvesting the lettuce.
05:31 As I mentioned, we'll be cutting several of these leaves off,
05:34 half of it to go back and found in the ground with the scientists to evaluate,
05:37 and half for us to make some delicious salads up here.
05:41 And that is quite a treat for us to have fresh lettuce up here on the space station,
05:45 since we don't have any many opportunities to have fresh food.
05:48 So right now, Drew Morgan and Christina Koch are doing a tool audit of the spacewalk tools
06:00 for the upcoming spacewalk series that we will start this Friday.
06:03 Here's Christina. She's photo-documenting the tool config for one of the Kulak bags.
06:10 [Music]
06:15 They're doing this work in the airlock.
06:18 This is the area where the crew members get suited up in the spacesuits.
06:22 They'll be right here, mounted to the wall, getting into the spacesuits,
06:25 and then they'll go out just past Christina there into the Kulak,
06:29 and that's the area that we will depressurize in order to then open the hatch
06:33 and go out into the vacuum of space to start the spacewalk.
06:36 Another way that we spend our day on board the ISS is doing maintenance on the space station itself.
06:42 So you can see Jessica here is doing some cleaning of one of our ventilation ducts.
06:47 That's important because dust and debris that's in the air doesn't really fall to the ground in microgravity,
06:52 so it actually all ends up on the surface of our ventilation ducts.
06:56 [Music]
07:05 What are you having for dinner, Jessica?
07:07 Oh, man. I have Indian fish curry in, and also a Russian can that I actually took out already to let it cool down.
07:15 That's one of my favorites.
07:17 I've got beef chips with mushrooms, and I'm going to start with the pea soup.
07:21 There you go. Try it.
07:27 [Music]
07:34 I was going to try the beef steak, but I haven't actually tried the beef steak yet.
07:37 It's good.
07:39 Let's put some music on for dinner.
07:43 Absolutely.
07:44 All right, I'm going to attempt to do your trick and get the whole peel off in one.
07:48 Okay.
07:49 I have an honorary mirror.
07:50 Oh, smell that. It smells so good. It's so fresh.
07:53 Look at the orange.
07:55 I was going to bite.
07:57 I know.
07:58 [Laughter]
08:01 Oh, man. That would have been so awesome.
08:04 [Music]
08:11 This is our hygiene station.
08:13 Can't go to night without plastic, you know me.
08:15 Believe me, I do.
08:17 Oh, this is that exfoliator I was telling you about.
08:20 I used it, and I really like it.
08:22 I knew you would because it's all natural, and it's actually food-based even.
08:25 Yeah, it was just like there was some sugar in it.
08:27 Yes.
08:28 It's actually not sweet.
08:29 It's like not gross if it gets in your mouth.
08:30 But I used it the other day, and I felt like my skin looked really good.
08:33 Yeah?
08:34 It's kind of like camping in some ways, you know?
08:38 It is a lot like --
08:39 You have everything you need. You just don't have running water.
08:41 It's just all a little different.
08:43 Luckily, we both love camping.
08:45 Maybe I will try some of my facial cleanser today.
08:49 [Music]
09:08 Hey, Goose.
09:09 Hey.
09:10 Our only time to stare at the earth is after work,
09:15 right when we shouldn't be getting blasted by sunlight.
09:19 We're over a lot of ocean right now.
09:21 Yeah, we're over the Pacific.
09:23 We're going to come over the tip of South America.
09:27 Awesome.
09:28 [Music]
09:37 All shut down.
09:38 [Music]
09:43 Good night, earth.
09:45 [Music]
09:52 [Music]
09:57 [Silence]
10:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]