Featured Image Credit: YouTube/NASA
Topics: Space, NASA, International Space Station, YouTube, TikTok
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Space, NASA, International Space Station, YouTube, TikTok
There's nothing better than tucking up in bed at night and making yourself into a big toasty cinnamon bun (in the words of Homer Simpson), but this is undeniably a more difficult task without gravity.
With this in mind, many have wondered how exactly astronauts get a good night's rest while up in space - and former Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA, answered people's question.
In a video of Williams giving a tour of the orbital laboratory, she started off by showing the right hand side of the Space Station and where the carry out experiments.
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Williams then proceeded to demonstrate where and how they sleep.
"People always ask about sleeping in space," she said.
"Do you lie down? Are you in a bed? Urm, not really.
"You don't really have the sensation of lying down, you just sit in your sleeping bag."
Williams then clambered into a phone booth-like bunker with a sleeping bag in it that appears to be tied to the side so they don't 'fly all over the place' while catching a few zzzs.
"The sleep station is also like a little office," she further explained.
"We've got a computer in here, as you can see. I've got a couple of little toys, I've got some books, I've got some clothes and other things that make it sort of like home."
The video was uploaded to NASA's YouTube channel back in 2012 during Williams' final days as Commander.
The description of the full 25 minute-long video reads: "In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan."
The expedition, labelled as Expedition 33, began on September 16, 2012.
While the video is over a decade old, a clip of Williams explaining their sleeping arrangements has been doing the rounds of TikTok of late, and people took to the social media outlet to share their thoughts on it.
"This situation looks like one big panic attack to me," one person said of the small bedrooms.
Another person echoed similar sentiments, writing: "For some reason not being able to 'lay down' frightens me."
Elsewhere, others noted how fun it would be to feel weightless.
"Ok we’ve gotta be honest zero gravity looks so fun," one person wrote - but I'm sure the novelty would wear off eventually as being in space can cause some weird things to happen to your body.