Vacuuming is a bit of a chore at the best of times, which is why many people have a robot to do it for them, or even pay someone else to take care of it. But on the International Space Station (ISS), there are no robots or cleaners that can step in, which means the astronauts have to do it themselves. But heck, it looks like a whole lot of fun.
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim has just shared a video showing how they use a vacuum cleaner in space.
How do we clean in space? Similar to how we clean on Earth, but weightlessness has some extra challenges. pic.twitter.com/MOLXm3P7k6
Thanks to microgravity, there’s no lifting or pulling (or possibly pushing) a machine. Instead, as Kim demonstrates in his video, you just clip the cleaner to your pants before floating off around the station to perform the task in hand. But that same microgravity means that the dust doesn’t settle anywhere, so what then? Kim explains the process.
The American astronaut, who arrived at the station in April on his first orbital mission, says they clean the station using a “pretty standard vacuum cleaner that you’d find on Earth,” but notes that the particles just float around in the weightless conditions.
“Luckily, we have an environmental control system that’s got fans and diffusers and HEPA filters and so most of the dust tends to collect in these areas,” Kim explains. It means that instead of looking like a goof and vacuuming the air, all you do is run the vacuum over the filters and other devices to suck up the trapped dust.
Responding to a comment to his post asking why he’s using a mains-connected vacuum and not a battery-powered one, Kim says that while cordless vacuums are available on the ISS, the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries don’t last long enough to clean the entire facility.
“The International Space Station is not just a place where we conduct research on behalf of institutions across the world, but it’s also our home for long periods of time,” Kim says. “And like any home, you have to keep it clean and tidy, so we distribute these chores across crew members and one of these chores is vacuuming.”
Interested in watching other videos showing daily life aboard the ISS, including how to use the bathroom? Then check out these videos made by the astronauts themselves over the years.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.