The crew, composed of Commander Reid Wiseman and astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, spoke to the press this Saturday about their daily routines and their moments of rest.
“We really love sleeping up here; it’s been such a long day that I think our bodies are ready to sleep no matter what,” Koch told NBC. “Most of us have been sleeping great,” he added.
The small space of the Orion capsule in which the astronauts travel has drawn the attention of the public and the press to how the crew sleeps and if they can rest.
NASA has scheduled a special schedule for the 10 days of the historic mission to the far side of the Moon, which includes time to sleep or take short naps.
Commander Wiseman explained that Koch has been sleeping with his head down, in the middle of the vehicle; “something like a bat suspended from our docking tunnel,” he detailed in an interview with ABC.
Meanwhile, Glover has fallen asleep in a corner of the ship, whose interior is approximately the size of two minivans, as explained by NASA.
Hansen sleeps stretched out in seat one and Commander Wiseman, under the screens, “in case something goes wrong.”
For Koch, sleeping in space has been one of the most comfortable ways to rest: “it is a very deep sleep, a restful sleep.”
Of course, he stressed that the first time he had a slight feeling that something was not right.
“Right when you wake up, maybe you feel like you’re falling or you don’t recognize your surroundings, but it’s great. I mean, honestly, being human up here is one of the coolest things about this mission. We’re just people trying to get by.”
NASA has used several songs to wake up the crew on their journey. This Saturday, the astronauts listened to fragments of “Pink Pony Club”, by the singer Chappell Roan.
The crew travels to a point where the Sun, Moon and the Orion spacecraft will align next Monday, allowing them to observe approximately 20% of the far side of the Moon, never before seen by the human eye.
By reaching the observation point, the astronauts will have achieved the greatest distance ever traveled by a human being from Earth: 406,773 kilometers (252,757 miles).