From down here on Earth there is little more to see, but close up the spot takes on a more complex form: a shiny hulk of interconnecting tubes and metal trusses bracketed by giant wing-like panels.
Living quarters
As roomy as a five-bedroom house, these are the most extreme living quarters ever built. What looks like a wandering star in the heavens is sunlight reflecting off the International Space Station.
With more than a decade of construction now coming to an end (next week's shuttle mission leaves only two more before the fleet is mothballed), astronauts can finally look forward to stretching out and using the space station to the full.
If the experiences of those who helped build and man the station are anything to go by, they are in for an extraordinary time. “I still can't believe what I've seen sometimes,” says Piers Sellers, the Sussex born boy-turned Nasa astronaut who took part in the most recent shuttle mission to the station in May.
Next week, Nasa will commemorate 10 years of life on the space station (the first residents arrived on 2 November 2000), but fewer than 200 people have first-hand knowledge of life on board. Only a fraction of them have stayed more than six months on the largest orbiting spacecraft ever built. The longer the stint, the closer these veterans come to perfecting the art of life in freefall.
The space station has a permanent crew of six, so the arrival of new faces is a cause for celebration. That said, even the most welcome visitors can cause havoc if they are inexperienced.
There is a subtle art to moving around without crashing into anything — or, more annoyingly, others — knocking computers, equipment and other objects off the walls to which they are attached with Velcro pads.
One serving shuttle pilot confessed to leaving a wake of laptops and other vital belongings behind him the first time he tried to fly from one room to another. People sit in mid air, tapping away at a computer, with only a toe hooked under a wall strap to anchor themselves.
No left, no right
Then, with a flick of the hand, they'll float up to another computer and carry on typing there. Getting from one place to another is all the more difficult because up and down (and so left and right) have no absolute meaning.
The ability to form a mental map of the space station — and then rotate it in 3D to suit your perspective — is a priceless skill for an astronaut.
In such close quarters personal hygiene is a must, but the weightless conditions make washing a delicate chore. Water droplets can cause choking if inhaled and can short-circuit equipment, so many astronauts use the music festival favourite: moist wipes.
On their first day or two in space, some astronauts feel queasy, a condition referred to in Nasa-speak as “stomach awareness”. Body fluids that are settled on Earth move up to the head, leaving astronauts with scrawny-looking chicken legs and bloated faces. On the downside, many astronauts feel congested in space and lose much of their sense of smell.
Unless there is a problem with the station's plumbing (and there has been), or someone's lunch has floated off and got lost in a nook or cranny (as has happened), there isn't much to smell on board, because air scrubbers filter out any odours as the air is circulated. Taste is another casualty.
Tasteless food
“We get a drawer with our name on it and select all our meals before we go, but nothing tastes like it does on Earth. It all tastes like cardboard,” says Sellers. “We get through gallons of Tabasco sauce.” If you want to know how hard it is to swallow in space, try eating while lying on one side, he suggests.
It takes the space station one and a half hours to fly around the planet, making for 16 complete laps a day. For those on board, the visual effect is spectacular.
Open the covers over the windows and the light can be so blinding that astronauts reach for their sunglasses. But after 45 minutes of daylight, a dark line appears on the planet, dividing Earth into night and day.
For a couple of seconds, the space station is bathed in a coppery light and then complete darkness. Another 45 minutes later, and just as abruptly, the sun rises to fill the station with brilliant light again.
The onslaught of apparent days and nights would play havoc with astronauts' body clocks, so a shutters-down and bedtime schedule is imposed by mission controllers. Each of the crew has a closet-like cabin where they can hook a sleeping bag to the wall and settle down for the night. Some strap pillows to their heads to make it feel more like lying down. The lights don't go out completely, though.
People dozing in orbit see streaks and bursts of bright colour caused by high-energy cosmic rays painlessly slamming into their retinas. Fans and air filters add to the distractions, so some astronauts wear ear plugs to block out the constant hum.
Unsurprisingly, falling asleep can take some getting used to. Just as you are nodding off, you can feel as though you've fallen off a 10—storey building.
People who look half asleep will suddenly throw their heads back with a start and fling out their arms. It gets easier with time. One Russian crew member is renowned for doing without a sleeping bag and falling asleep wherever he ends the day.
Anyone still awake after bedtime would see his snoozing form drift by, slowly bouncing off the walls, his course set by the air currents that gently pushed and pulled him.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010
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