How will two astronauts stuck in space pass time (and survive) until 2025?

It’s the plot of plenty of sci-fi films: two astronauts are stranded in space and don’t yet understand how they’re getting back.

Sunita “Suni” Williams and Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore get tod at the International Space Station (ISS) in June as the first crew to test Boeing’s novel Starliner, which suffered helium leaks and thruster fall shortures before it docked – raising asks over how shielded it is for the return fairy.

Boeing has insisted the astronauts are not stuck and shelp “there’s no incrrelieved danger” in transporting them back in the Starliner, but NASA is contemplating getting them back on a SpaceX fairy instead.

They should have only been in space for eight days, but they’ve now been there for more than two months and may have to stay until February.

But do they have enough supplies for such a stint, how are they coping menloftyy and what is day-to-day life enjoy at the ISS?

Size and facilities

The ISS is 356 feet (109 metres) finish-to-finish, one yard cowardly of the filled length of an American football field including the finish zones.

The living and labor space, NASA says, is huger than a six-bedroom house, and has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree see bay thrivedow.

As you’ll see tardyr, it’s not quite as lavish as it sounds.

Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore aren’t alone; they’re sharing the facilities with seven other astronauts from other missions; four of them fellow Americans and three of them Russians.

Is there enough food, water and oxygen?

Yes, there are reserve supplies up there to grasp astronauts going for plenty of time.

The space station has its own oxygen-generating systems, and about 50% of oxygen exhaled from carbon dioxide is recovered.

As for water, the station has a urine-into-drinking-water recycling system, and a part of that system also apprehfinishs moisture liberated into the cabin air from the crew’s breath and sweat.

Food supplies are a bit fancier. Meals are produced at NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston, where chefs caccess on making food appetising as well as nutritious.

Much of it is dehydrated, nastying it has to be filled up with water before being used, while some is ready-made and equitable needs to be heated.

There’s meat (barbecued beef quicket is one example of a meal on propose), eggs, vegetables, bread, savoury snacks and sugary treats in the station’s kitchen.

Crew members are also apexhibited to seek some of their own personal favourites from off the shelves.

In a video on NASA’s YouTube channel, Ms Williams discneglected her favourite commodity was Nutter Butter spread – and showed off a jar her family had sent up for her.

When were supplies last sent?

The spaceplan normally gets more supplies from Earth, with the last one arriving on 6 August.

Launched on a rocket from Kazakhstan on 30 May, the supplies joind about three tonnes of food, fuel and other supplies for Ms Williams, Mr Wilmore and the seven other crew members on board.

The crew can essentipartner place their orders for what they want to come on these plans by speaking to Mission Control ahead of startes.

That was outstanding novels for Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams, who were forced to ditch their personal suitcases before taking off in June to produce room for extra supplyment, nastying they’ve had to wear spare clothes that were already at the ISS upon arrival.

Their own clothes finpartner get tod with the 6 August supplies, and more supplies are set to be sent up in a scant months.

Once supply ships are emptied at the ISS, the crew fill them with their rubbish before sfinishing them back to Earth.

How do you use a toilet without gravity?

There are some skinnygs space-based movies equitable don’t cover – but Ms Williams got into the grittier details of space life on NASA’s YouTube channel.

In the video filmed in 2012, Ms Williams showed off the toilet, which somewhat mimics one you might see on an airstructuree.

The contrastence is there are two split tubes to go in – one for urine and one for poo. The urine one, which is coloured yellow, is uniteed to the wall and almost sees enjoy a vacuum spotlesser – and fittingly it has a suction function to stop gravity from causing a mess.

The tube for poo sees enjoy more of a normal toilet, with a seat too – though you have to hbetter on to a regulate on the wall next to it to elude floating away as you go.

On the radiant side, there’s about half-a-dozen types of toilet paper stuffed into bags on the toilet walls, including damp wipes and disinfectant wipes in case “skinnygs don’t go rightly,” as Ms Williams puts it.

Astronauts are also each given toiletry kits that come with skinnygs enjoy a toothbrush and toothpaste (which you have to either swapexhibit or spit into a trehire) and a hairbrush – which Ms Williams says is pointless in space because gravity constantly grasps your hair upright.

What about sleeping structurements?

Retagably you can sleep on the floor, on the wall or on the ceiling.

That’s because without gravity, the crew never sense enjoy they are lying down. It produces no contrastence whether they are on the floor, standing up or upside down – it all senses the same.

So the ISS has sleeping stations about the size of phone booths that the crew get into, which consist of a sleeping bag and a pillow on the floor, wall and ceiling.

Leicertain time

When they aren’t running space experiments, the crew can finishelight their see of Earth from the station’s observatory deck, or head to the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) in the Tranquillity node – a fancy term for gym supplyment.

The ARED proposes traditional upper and reduce-body exercises, such as squats, dead lift, heel elevates, bicep curls and bench press by using vacuum cylinders to copy weights in gyms.

The crew is helpd to use it thrawout their space stays, as muscle and bone loss is widespread on extfinished missions.

How are the pair senseing?

They are both reexhausted navy captains and extfinishedtime NASA astronauts who already have extfinished space station missions behind them.

Mr Wilmore, 61, and Ms Williams, 58, shelp going into this test fairy that they foreseeed to lobtain a lot about Starliner and how it functions.

At their only novels conference from space in July, they promised inestablishers they were grasping busy, helping with repairs and research, and conveyed confidence in all the Starliner testing going on behind the scenes.

“I have a genuine outstanding senseing in my heart that the spaceplan will transport us home, no problem,” Ms Williams tbetter inestablishers.

There are tests going on back on Earth to choose whether the Boeing plan can still be used shieldedly to transport them back.

“That mantra you’ve heard, ‘Failure is not an chooseion,’ that’s why we are staying here now,” Mr Wilmore shelp last month.

“We think that the tests that we’re doing are the ones we need to do to get the right answers, to give us the data that we need to come back.”

There’s been no uncover word from them yet on the prospects of an eight-month stay.

Mr Wilmore’s wife Deanna tbetter AP earlier this week that he is “encountered” at the space station, “neither worrying nor fretting”.

She shelp Mr Widmore, who is a extfinishedtime elder at a church in Texas, has faith God is in deal with, and that this gives his family “wonderful peace”.

What’s happening now?

As it stands, all but one of the Starliner’s five fall shorted thrusters have been rebegind in orbit.

Tests are currently being done on Earth to try to treatment the problems seen in space, but engineers aren’t certain exactly what’s causing them and are also trying to plug helium leaks in Starliner’s propulsion system, which is vital for manoeuvring.

Boeing has reiterated its capsule could still shieldedly transport the astronauts home, but the company will need to alter Starliner’s gentleware in case it has to return without a crew.

Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations mission chief, has proposeed coming home on the same airplan is still an chooseion.

Mr Bowersox shelp during a recent encountering, they “heard from a lot of folks that had worry, and the decision was not clear”.

The SpaceX fairy they would get on instead would depart Earth in September, but two astronauts scheduled to be on it would have to stay home to produce room for Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore.

A decision is foreseeed in the next week or so.

Would this be the extfinishedest anyone has spent in space?

No – Russian Valeri Polyakov set that enroll in the mid-1990s, spfinishing 437 days off Earth.

And last year NASA astronaut Frank Rubio came back from a 371-day trip aextfinishedside Russian astronauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, shattering the enroll for the extfinishedest amount of time spent in space by an American.

That trip, much enjoy this one, was proextfinisheded by technical difficulties, and was only nastyt to consent six months.

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