Sleeping in space

Uploaded on April 12, 2013

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Sleeping in space

2013-04-12 - It's bedtime on the ISS. CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield shows us how astronauts sleep in space. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA)

Chris Hadfield: Hi, Chris Hadfield here aboard the International Space Station.

We keep busy on board the space station. Long days, lots of work, physical exercise, at the end of it, you’re tired, but how do you sleep in space? In order to make it comfortable for the astronauts, originally, they were going to put us all in one habitation module with sleep stations all around it, but the way the station was eventually built, we have sleep stations inside Node 2 which is in the forward part of the station and inside the service module which is the aft, a total six small bedrooms, sleep stations or sleep pods.

And inside each one is just a sleeping bag, tied to the wall. You might think it’s uncomfortable not having a mattress or a pillow, but without gravity of course, you don’t need anything to hold you up. You can just completely relax and you don’t even need a pillow. It’s space, you don’t even have to hold your head up. So you can relax every muscle in your body and your arms float up in front of you and you head tips forward, but before I go to sleep, I’ve got to put on my pyjamas because I have space jammies, I’ll be right back.

Great, I’m in my super comfy Russian full-length pyjamas, nice for when you have to get up in the middle of the night and I’m ready to go to bed. I’ll show you where I sleep.This is my sleep station, my sleep pod. This is where I spend up to eight hours every day here on board the space station. It’s actually on the floor, but once you’re inside, you just can’t tell.

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