By Bethany Lee | 2025-11-13

It’s hard to imagine living in the vast expanses of outer space, a realm scientists describe as a vacuum, a void of emptiness infinitely expanding with the universe.

But astronauts do it all the time -- often spending months on shuttles or space stations with no opportunities to breathe fresh air, walk through a park, or spend time with their friends and family.

Mental fortitude is a required skill for space dwellers, and astronauts have come up with lots of different ways to occupy their time to stay sane in zero gravity.

Much of their time in space is spent doing the things we expect them to do: conducting scientific experiments, going on space walks, and collecting observations to bring back to Earth.

But astronauts also have a surprising amount of downtime. On the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts are required to have at least a few hours of free time each day, and they even get weekends off.

That leaves them with a lot of time to fill.

Many take advantage of the few personal items they’re allowed to bring on board, doing things like quilting, playing cards, reading books, watching movies, writing in their personal journals, or emailing with loved ones back home.

Some bring instruments and play music, with NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield, who brought his guitar, filming an ISS-version of David Bowie’s "Space Oddity."

Connection to home

For some, their personal items connect them to their home and family.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who is of Indian heritage, makes a point to bring things that have personal and cultural significance to her.

Williams has brought a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, two ancient Hindu texts, on her space missions, and even packs samosas, a favorite Indian snack.

"I really appreciate my Indian heritage and was glad I could bring part of it with me to space," Williams said at an address to Indian students at the National Science Center in New Delhi in 2013, after her second space mission.

Astronauts also find resilience in the bonding of a shared mission, including the hardships it brings.

Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut who flew on the ISS, said her biggest fear while in space is not that something will happen to her, but that something will happen to the people she loves on Earth.

In March 2011, Coleman was onboard the ISS when a deadly tsunami struck Japan.

In support of their Japanese colleagues, the crew built a flock of white origami cranes, a symbol of hope and rebuilding, and filmed them floating in the space station where they could be watched live on Japanese television.

Coleman said the videos were displayed on billboards in Japan for months afterward.

"We all have someone we leave behind, someone we love. We all grieve -- not just the big losses, but the loss of so many ordinary moments with family and friends," Coleman wrote in her 2024 book, Sharing Space.

"We bond in the painful moments of loss that remind us of our capacity for love and connection."

'Like Saturday on Earth'

But astronauts connect through good times just as easily as bad ones.

In 2024, astronauts on the ISS held their own version of the Summer Olympics, "competing" in the zero-gravity version of sports like shot put, long jump and power lifting.

On missions that can last for multiple months, living in space eventually starts to feel like the new normal.

"In some ways it’s very different and in some ways it’s much like a Saturday on Earth," NASA astronaut Kate Rubins said in an interview with Good Day LA from aboard the ISS in 2021.

With the exception, of course, that she can look out a window and see our home planet. In fact, Rubins said, she has spent an entire orbit just watching the planet pass through the window of the cupola.

"I don’t even know that 90 minutes has gone by because it’s just so fascinating and beautiful."

From the window of the ISS, astronauts can see the clouds passing above each continent, mountain ranges and oceans miles long passing before them in a matter of seconds.

That’s a view that never gets old.