To find out what it might be like, for 48 hours, I tried to live just as astronauts do – attempting to keep up with the schedule of crewmembers on the ISS. As it turns out, they have a very tightly packed workday. I woke up, drank coffee, ate not-so-great food directly from the bag, worked out, worked and repeated the pattern until the day was done. Oh, and I had to spit into a towel twice a day after brushing my teeth.

A typical day onboard the ISS begins by getting up at 6 or 6:30am (the ISS uses Coordinated Universal Time or GMT). American astronaut and medical doctor Kjell Lindgren spent 141 days aboard the ISS in 2015, participating in two space walks. He says he started his days reading a daily summary of the news and a two-page summary of the previous day, brushing his teeth and eating breakfast. By about 7:30am each crew has a daily planning conference with their respective mission controls to plan the day ahead and ask any questions.

“The rest of the day is very tight – it’s scheduled down to five-minute activities,” Lindgren explains. “Within that day we might do research, maintenance on the station, or take photos of natural disasters. We get an hour for lunch and two-and-a-half hours for exercise.”

SAMPLE DAILY LOG FOR ASTRONAUTS ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

7am GMT Central – Wake up and don arm band to record ECG measurements for Bio Rhythms experiment

7:05am – PostSleep (time when the astronauts go through their morning hygiene routines, eat breakfast, etc)

8:30am – Morning Daily Planning Conference: time when the astronauts talk briefly with the various control centers around the world (Nasa, Roscosmos, JAXA, Esa, CSA) about the activities scheduled for the day

8:45am – Morning Prep

9am – install computer update

9:05am – exchange data collection cards on the Bio Rhythms hardware

9:25am – gather equipment for upcoming maintenance activity

10:25am – treadmill exercise

11:25am – Personal CO2 monitor data collection

12:15am – Window shutter close

12:25am – white space (downtime – they normally wouldn’t have much of this, but they worked over the weekend, so this gives them some of that time back)

1:10pm – Ethernet cable swap

1:15pm – Video camera set up (to record maintenance work for the ground)

1:25pm – Nutrition experiment questionnaire assessing food frequency

1:35pm – midday meal

2:35pm – white space

3:05pm – Ared exercise (advanced resistive exercise device – a microgravity version of weight lifting)

4:35pm – capture photos for the AMO2 experiment to be sent to the ground

4:40pm – install a vacuum access port in Node 1 to provide vacuum capability for visiting vehicles that will berth there

7pm – Configuration checkout for Materials Science Research Rack computer

7:20pm – Orbital-6 Cygnus vehicle cargo inventory

7:35pm – weekly astronaut office/crew conference

7:55pm – PreSleep (time for evening activities, such as dinner, etc.)

8:25pm – weekly flight director/crew conference

8:45pm – Evening Daily Planning Conference (time for the astronauts to talk with the ground team about work accomplished during the day and plans for tomorrow)

9pm – PreSleep time resumes

10:30pm – Sleep

* Source Nasa – sample log for astronaut Tim Kopra

At 7 or 7:30pm each crew has an evening conference to summarise the day. “After that the day belongs to us,” says Lindgren. “We’ll have dinner, we might watch a TV show together, answer emails, take photos of Earth. Then it’s time to get ready for bed by 10 or 11 to prepare for the next day.” During his mission, Lindgren and the rest of the crew were lucky enough to enjoy a preview Ridley Scott’s film The Martian before it was released on Earth.

During my astronaut day, I kept busy by interviewing researchers, reading academic papers, taking notes for this story and watching recent videos made on the ISS. One of the hardest and best parts of course was exercising at least two hours a day (I split it into two one-hour workouts of interval cardio training, weightlifting and yoga.)