ISS: What life is like for Nasa astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore
And finally, bed again, and time to rest after a day in a noisy environment (fans run constantly to disperse pockets of carbon dioxide so the astronauts can breathe, making it about as loud as a very noisy office).
“We can have eight hours of sleep – but most people get stuck in the window looking at Earth,” Ms Stott says.
All three astronauts talked about the psychological impact of seeing their home planet from 400km in orbit.
“I felt very insignificant in that vastness of space,” Ms Sharman says. “Seeing Earth so clearly, the swirls of clouds and the oceans, made me think about the geopolitical boundaries that we construct and how actually we are completely interconnected.”
Ms Stott says she loved living with six people from different countries “doing this work on behalf of all life on Earth, working together, figuring out how to deal with problems”.
“Why can’t that be happening down on our planetary spaceship?” she asks.
Eventually all astronauts must leave the ISS – but these three say they would return in a heartbeat.
They don’t understand why people think the Nasa astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are “stranded”.
“We dreamed, worked and trained our entire lives hoping for an extended stay in space,” says Mr Hadfield. “The greatest gift you can give a professional astronaut is to let them stay longer.”
And Ms Stott says that as she left the ISS she thought: “You’re gonna have to pull my clawing hands off the hatch. I don’t know if I’m going to get to come back.”
