How Astronauts Sleep While Flying At 17,500 mph

There's no pillow, no mattress, and no "down." Astronauts on the International Space Station sleep in a compartment the size of a phone booth, zipped into a bag on the wall, while the station circles Earth sixteen times a day. We spend one night aboard the ISS: why the bed is fixed to a wall, the fan that keeps a sleeping astronaut's air breathable, the hum that never stops, sixteen sunrises a day, why crews average about six hours of sleep, and the night in November 2021 when Mission Control woke the whole crew and sent them to their spacecraft. Next: How climbers sleep in Everest's death zone. Chapters 0:00 Bedtime at 17,500 mph 1:09 A room the size of a phone booth 3:16 The fan that keeps you breathing 4:24 A machine that never goes quiet 5:37 Sixteen sunrises a day 7:21 No pillow, no mattress, no down 8:30 Eight and a half hours, on paper 9:38 The middle of the night 10:41 Less than five millimeters 11:57 The night they were woken 13:53 Morning, sixteen sunrises later Sources Crew quarters design and ventilation — NASA technical reports (NTRS 20080013462, 20100017014) ISS acoustics requirements — NASA-STD-3001 technical brief Sleep duration and medication use — Barger et al., The Lancet Neurology (2014) ISS water recovery (98%) — NASA ICES 2023 status report ISS pressure hull and Whipple shielding — NASA NTRS 20060026214 November 15, 2021 debris event and January 14, 2015 ammonia alarm — NASA and news reports Image and video credits Photos and video courtesy of NASA (images.nasa.gov). NASA does not endorse this channel. Thumbnail: NASA photos iss056e201352 (ISS) and iss051e029443 (astronaut Jack Fischer). "Mount Everest North Face" by Carsten Nebel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Night traffic photo by Brian Hurh (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons. Some illustrative scenes (debris cloud, cutaway diagrams, night interiors) are AI-generated. Narration voice: AI-generated. #space #ISS #astronauts