Learning from an astronaut

Mr. Reiter, you spent around 170 days each on the Mir space station and the ISS. Such cramped conditions can cause stress. How does an astronaut cope with life on a space station?

Astronauts undergo two years of training to prepare them for living and working in an out-of-the-ordinary environment, but there are parallels with the current coronavirus situation. If you have a well-structured working day containing interesting tasks, you don’t even notice you’re cooped up in a space station. It’s also helpful if you’re not hanging around each other all the time, but can retreat occasionally to a module in the space station. Sometimes you only meet each other for breakfast, lunch or dinner and ask each other: “Hey, what have you done today?” It’s important not to live for the day, otherwise things soon become monotonous. We keep strictly to our routines on a space station. They help us endure the cramped conditions. One of them is heralding in the weekend with a special dinner on Friday evenings. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers or onions can be something very special in space, since the supply ship only brings very small quantities of them.

Remote working demands good organization. How do astronauts structure their day?

After getting up at 7 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time and having breakfast, you hold a briefing with ground control in Moscow or Houston. Then you start your work, interrupted by lunch and exercise, and then there’s a debriefing after dinner. In between, you might have to check on-board systems now and again. Even in space, you have to do the household chores on the weekend: cleaning filters and disinfecting surfaces, for example. But you also have a bit of leisure time to enjoy the wonderful view, take videos and photos and hold a video chat with your family.

What’s important to ensure a team works smoothly at a distance?

We astronauts come into contact personally with all scientists and technicians during the preparations. That’s a key aspect: Astronauts and their colleagues on the ground see themselves as a team and know each other well. Aside from talking about technical issues, time for a few personal words is also a must. That’s far more important when you work remotely via electronic channels than in a normal office, where you automatically speak about private matters over a coffee or in the cafeteria. All of us have experienced that on the space station and you must never underestimate how vital such contact is.

Little exercise, weeks of working from a home office – some of us have a “coronavirus belly bulge” as a result. How does an astronaut keep physically fit in a cramped environment, not to mention in zero gravity?

Exercise is part of the daily routine, but you also need discipline. You lose your fitness far more quickly in zero gravity than on Earth. After just two days without sports, your legs feel leaden during a workout on the treadmill. A gross time of two-and-a-half hours, i.e. including setting up the equipment and body care afterwards, is scheduled. That leaves a net time of one-and-a-half hours for weight training or endurance training on the cycle ergometer or treadmill, on which you’re strapped in place.

How do astronauts avoid cabin fever and arguments in cramped confines?

A crew is the synergy of its members. What you achieve on a space station is not a matter of one individual acting alone. Everyone goes through the odd bad patch after four months, no matter how beautiful the Earth looks from above or how pleasant weightlessness is. When the crew notices that a member is feeling low, the others take care of their colleague right away and build him or her back up mentally. Because you know you depend on each other. That’s why there has never been a real crisis on board.

Final question: KWS breeds plants and offers farmers satellite-based tools for ascertaining the ideal time to harvest corn, optimizing the seeding rate and observing sugarbeet fields. What else can space travel do to help advance sustainable agriculture?

There are very exciting developments and we are only just getting started. The possibilities are nowhere near exhausted. Whether fertilizing tailored precisely down to the square meter or monitoring of the water supply: The Sentinel satellites in the European Copernicus program are equipped with a raft of different sensors and supply masses of data. Many start-ups approach us with great ideas and services for agriculture. And on board the ISS there’s the EMCS module for conducting experiments on breeding plants that can handle drought stress. |