A day on the job

In space, there’s neither night nor day, and there are many sunrises and sunsets in every workday. So each workday has phases that differ from the earthbound night, morning and evening.

The first phase of the day is Post-Sleep. After sleeping, Usachev woke up and prepared for the day. He ate breakfast, went to the lavatory, washed and tidied up. That day, he also had to take a blood sample for subsequent analysis.

Post-Sleep was followed by Prep-Work, which involved preparing the station for the workday’s activities and setting up the equipment for the scheduled experiments.

Then came the Daily Planning Conference (DPC) at which the crew reviewed the scheduled tasks with the staff on the ground.

The first task of the day was a routine check of station air in which Usachev checked for impurities such as dust and particles in the air. Then came task MED-NO-11, an analysis of the blood sample he took earlier. As soon as the analysis was finished, it was time for another routine check for impurities in the air.

Then Usachev exercised to keep his muscles, bones and heart in shape. He exercised until lunch, when the whole crew assembled in the Zvezda-module to have lunch together.

After lunch, he performed maintenance work on the Russian part of the station. That took more than an hour. Afterwards, he adjusted the oxygen level in the station air.

Then he exercised for about an hour, before the afternoon daily planning meeting and writing of a report.

The workday mostly over, he began a new Prep-Work phase in which the station was readied for a new sleep period. All equipment was safely stowed. Then came Pre-Sleep, his free time of the workday, during which he fixed and ate dinner and then relaxed. After an hour of Pre-Sleep, there was another Daily Planning Conference, at which the crew reviewed the workday tasks with the staff on the ground.

After the meeting, Usachev again had some free time for personal hygiene, reading and relaxing before the last phase, eight hours of Sleep.