ISS Tour With Nicole Mann and Kjell Lindgren: Modules and Daily Life

Seven people usually live aboard the International Space Station, three cosmonauts and four astronauts, but during this tour 11 were aboard because of a crew handover. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, who spent 157 days on the station, and Kjell Lindgren, who spent 311 days in total, guide viewers through it. The station flies at 17,500 mph and orbits the planet once every 90 minutes.

Science and plants in Columbus and Kibo

The tour starts in the European Space Agency's Columbus module, which houses many experiments, including the veggie enclosure where dwarf tomatoes were grown during their stay. In the Japanese Kibo module, experiments look at flames and at different metal components, and a freezer is housed there. The airlock lets the crew place equipment and experiments on the outside of the station.

Living and working in the US segment

Crew quarters in Node 2 are about the size of a telephone booth. The US lab is described as the heart and brains of the US segment, holding avionics and many experiments. The crew spends about 2 hours a day exercising on a bike, a treadmill and the advanced resistive exercise device, which gives up to 600 lb of resistance to maintain bone health and muscle strength. Node 1, the oldest US node, holds the galley, where utensils and hot sauce are held down with Velcro or tape. The Cupola, a series of windows, is used for Earth observation, including weather and volcano eruptions, and is a favorite place to watch aurora.

Airlock and spacesuits

The airlock holds the spacesuits used for spacewalks. Behind it is the crew lock, normally full of stuff, but completely empty before a spacewalk because it is the section that goes down to vacuum.

Into the Russian segment

PMA1 connects the US segment to the Russian section, narrowing from square hatches to round ones, and serves as a pantry of storage bags. The hosts say this segment was the first component of the station and orbited Earth alone for 16 days before Space Shuttle Endeavor arrived and installed the Unity module. Five agencies take part: Japan, Europe, Canada, the US and Russia. The service module is the heart and brains of the Russian segment, with an emergency command panel, crew quarters, a toilet and science, and many windows and cameras. Nauka, the new science module, adds another crew quarters and an additional toilet. Crews gather in the Russian segment on Friday nights and in the US galley on Saturday nights.

Orientation and handover

There is no upside down in orbit, but crews take cues from how the models were set up in training, from labels, and from the lights, which are expected to be overhead. Because the station travels so fast, a zoomed-in photograph of Earth through the window called WORF requires tracking the planet to avoid blur.

The 11 people aboard result from the handover between Crew 4 and Crew 5, whose two Dragons were both attached. Crew 4 had been up almost 6 months, and Crew 5 had docked a few days earlier. Anna Kikina, a Crew 5 member, was the first cosmonaut to launch on a Dragon spacecraft. During the handover Lindgren slept in the Crew 4 Dragon, Freedom, which he describes as a penthouse suite for its windows.