--- description: There's a lot of messy housekeeping when you're in orbit—and a lot of exciting work too. title: Space: It Ain't All Glamour image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb638b1f77c836b5b/698851db2dce0122c79e3e8a/nasa-international-space-station.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Science](/section/science/) ## Science Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Space: It Ain't All Glamour ## Video: A Year in Space: The Mission [Watch (HLS stream): A Year in Space: The Mission](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gEqrnCPI.m3u8) (3:59)  _Published 2015-03-24. On March 28, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly begins a historic year in Space. Time follows Kelly and his twin brother, Mark, as they work the test the boundaries of long-term space travel._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large May 27, 2015 7:33 PM CUT  NASA  by [Jeffrey Kluger](/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large May 27, 2015 7:33 PM CUT How did your pre-treated urine transfer rate work out this week? I’m sorry? You had no pre-treated urine transfer rate to worry about? Oh, then you must not be aboard the International Space Station (ISS). It’s been a busy few days for the six crewmembers of the ISS—which pretty much describes all of their days. If there’s one point all astronauts mention about their time aloft, it’s the challenge of the schedule—the long, every-minute-accounted-for checklist of items that have to be completed every single day. Some of them are the glamour stuff of space travel—spacewalks, formation-flying with arriving vehicles, TV broadcasts to the folks back home. Some are a good deal more mundane, such as troubleshooting the stubbornly low flow rate in a system that is supposed to filter and recycle urine into ordinary drinking water. Mission planners are not shy about revealing just how hard they make the astronauts work, as a glimpse at [NASA’s ISS blog](https://blogs.nasa.gov/ "undefined") reveals. On May 22, the crew woke up to a list of 65 must-do items; three days later it was 67; the next day was a lighter day by comparison, with a scant 55. A lot of what was done on those days was indeed very big stuff. On May 26, year-in-space marathoner Scott Kelly and crewmate Terry Virts oversaw the transfer of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) from one berthing site to another on the station—which is both much more important and much more difficult than it sounds. For one thing, the module weighs 11 tons. And like most station modules, it’s roughly the size of a school bus. Relocating it meant three control centers had to work in tandem: Mission Control in Houston; the Mobile Servicing Systems Operations Center in Quebec, Canada, which oversees the work of the station’s robotic arm; and the station itself, with Kelly and Virts in charge. The goal was to decouple the PMM from the Unity module and movie it to the nearby Tranquility module—by remote control, while moving 17,135 mph (27, 576 k/h), at an altitude of 259 mi. (417 km). But it was worth the effort. By 2017, two new commercial crew vehicles built by Boeing and SpaceX will begin flying to the station, freeing the U.S. from its reliance on the Russian Soyuz as the only way to get astronauts to space. That required reconfiguring the station to open up the best docking ports to receive crew—and that meant the PMM had to find somewhere else to live. A lot of the other work that went on in the past few days involved the extensive biomedical tests that Kelly, his fellow one-year flier Misha Kornienko, and the other astronauts regularly undergo to study the human body’s fitness for long-term space flight. Kelly and Kornienko went through their paces in what will be a year’s worth of fine-motor skill tests, tapping at touch screens to determine how their reaction time and dexterity change over the course of their stay. Kelly and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka worked with ultrasound equipment to help study how fluid shifting from the lower body to the head affects the shape of the eyeball and the condition of the optic nerve, both of which are thought to cause long-lasting—and perhaps permanent—changes in the vision of astronauts who have spent extended time in zero-g. Next week, Kelly will undergo similar testing while wearing a CHIBIS lower body negative pressure suit, which pulls fluid back down from the head and reduces the pressure that causes the damage. And, yes, a more colloquial description for a CHIBIS lower body negative pressure suit is rubber vacuum pants—but if your vision depended on them, you’d be happy to put them on too. Other work on the station involved echocardiograms, with crewmembers serving sometimes as Crew Medical Officers (CMOs) and sometimes as patients as they performed the scans on one another; experiments on convection, fluid physics and the effects of the space environment on various materials subjected to long-term exposure outside the station; and maintenance work on extravehicular activity (EVA) suits in preparation for spacewalks soon to come. None of the work is easy, some of it is monotonous, and all of it just keeps coming. On the other hand, you get to perform it while weightless, with a view outside the office window that is pretty hard to beat. As workplaces go, you could do a lot worse. ### See Scott Kelly's First 30 Days in Space  Scott Kelly has posted a photo almost every day since arriving at the ISS. Here, see a selection from his first 30 days in space. (Via Twitter on April 23, 2015) Scott Kelly—NASA  "Was asked what I write down on this small kneeboard. Mostly hardware serial numbers and #ISS locations. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 28, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "I wonder what they do here. #NorthAfrica #YearInSpace" - via Twitter April 27, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Looks serene from @Space\_Station, but my thoughts are still with the people affected by the #NepalEarthquake." - via Twitter on April 26, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#Movie night in micro #Gravity aboard #ISS on our new HD projector which we use for conferences, tech software, etc.." - via Twitter on April 25, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "My #bedroom aboard #ISS. All the comforts of #home. Well, most of them. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 24, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#EarthObservations Window on the world. Studying our planet from the cupola on @space\_station #NoPlaceLikeHome" - via Twitter on April 22, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Blown away by a dust swept #RedSea. Good morning from the @space\_station! #YearInSpace." - via Twitter on April 21, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#Calcutta area shimmers in the sunlight. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 20, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Africa. I wonder what these desert sands look like up close?#YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 19, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Working on #ISS research today & how micro gravity impacts aging and muscles of the C Elegan roundworm. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 18, 2015 NASA  "Great job @AstroSamantha and @AstroTerry capturing #SpaceX Dragon this morning! #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 17, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "The varied colors of #Madagascar. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 16, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Sometimes the #world seems to shimmer. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 15, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Congrats @SpaceX and @NASA team on a successful launch! Watched with my crewmates aboard #ISS. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 14, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "This #butterfly caught my eye while flying high above the #gulfofmexico. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 13, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Not sure what is going on on this beach in #Mexico but it's a striking image. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 12, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#Earth is breathtaking. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 11, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Hopefully this is pollen or algae and not something man made. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 10, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Madagascar drains its red mud into the Indian Ocean. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 9, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Looks messy, but it's functional. Our #food table on the @space station. What's for breakfast? #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 8, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#Patagonia never disappoints. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 7, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "#Australia. You are very beautiful. Thanks for being there to brighten our day. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 6, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Good morning Southern #Florida from the #ISS. #YearInSpace" - via Twitter on April 5, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  "Enjoying Saturday evening dinner with @AstroTerry on the #ISS" - via Twitter on April 4, 2015 NASA  "#FlashbackFriday Got my 1st EMT training at 16\. Emergency medical training on #ISS keeps me 35 years proficient." - via Twitter on April 3, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA  ".@FLOTUS Thank you. Made it! Moving into crew quarters on @space\_station to begin my #yearinspace." - via Twitter on March 30, 2015 Scott Kelly—NASA ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3898071/space-station-glamour/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3898071/space-station-glamour/"},"headline":"Space: It Ain't All Glamour","datePublished":"2015-05-27T19:33:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:19.498Z","description":"There's a lot of messy housekeeping when you're in orbit—and a lot of exciting work too","url":"https://time.com/3898071/space-station-glamour/","keywords":["NASA","international space station","iss","scott kelly"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb638b1f77c836b5b/698851db2dce0122c79e3e8a/nasa-international-space-station.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb638b1f77c836b5b/698851db2dce0122c79e3e8a/nasa-international-space-station.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"International space station","caption":"International space station","creditText":"NASA","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3898071/space-station-glamour/","name":"Space: It Ain't All Glamour"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A Year in Space: The Mission","description":"On March 28, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly begins a historic year in Space. 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