A Day In A Life Of An Astronaut

I wake up because of the blinding light outside .The sun truly comes out like thunder I say to myself ,each sunrise lasts only a few seconds ,but in that time you see at least eight different bands of color come and go ,from a brilliant red to the brightest and deepest blue. I see sixteen sunrises everyday here in space, but no sunrise or sunset is ever the same. I am still overwhelmed by the fact that I am one of the people who have been to space. I summon up that time when I was a kid a gazing at the stars ,wondering the beauty of the twinkling light in the black sky, I never knew that someday I will be between the stars staring at the planet in which I was born in. I will never forget my first view of the earth; it was of atolls and clouds. Close to the window I could see that this pacific scene in motion was rimmed by the great curved limb of the earth. I held my breath, but something was missing. Here was a tremendous visual sight, but viewed in silence. There was no grand music accompaniment, no triumphant or symphony.

I felt surprisingly unfulfilled Being an astronaut is probably the most amazing job in my opinion. I start my day by brushing my teeth and taking a shower like most people start there day, but these tasks are not quite the same as back on earth considering the fact that you are in zero-gravity, so instead I use a damp cloth to wash myself .After that, I take my breakfast, you probably know that food carried inside the space shuttle are all dehydrated, then it is rehydrated again to be eaten, and let me say they are not quite delicious but I am allowed to take some of my favorite treat with me in the shuttle. Astronauts are given a menu decided by the space agency, which contains balanced meals with a calorie count of 1900 to 3200 calories per day. That is more than an average human would eat on earth, we eat a lot in order to maintain our body mass Back on Earth, I exercise regularly against gravity to keep my muscles and bones in good condition, but up here in space in a zero-gravity scenario, I don’t really use my bones and muscles, as a result, bone density drops down and also I tend to lose muscle mass as they are no longer employed to support my weight.

So that is why exercising inside a space shuttle is not a decision, but mandatory to keep bones and muscles in working condition. I exercise two hours daily, I use a treadmill for cardiovascular exercise. You are probably wondering, what astronauts do? Well, what we usually do up here is observing and photographing natural and manmade changes on earth overtime as well as short time scale events like storms so we can better understand our planet. We also study things from outer space just like the sun, the Moon, the planet’s, the meteors and comets. As an astronaut you don’t really know what is waiting for you ahead you might just come across strange things for instance a couple of days ago we discovered a massive meteor that is approaching our planet in about 900 km/h.

We concluded that in 300 years approximately from know this massive meteor, and by massive I mean as in the size of Jupiter, is going to collide with our life sustaining planet. This meteor might change the course of life. At the end of the day, I would stare at the photo of my family hanging on my wall. I wiped the tears off my eyes and changed my glance to the sparkling blue and white jewel outside, rising gradually like a small pearl in thick sea of black mystery. That’s where life is, I said to myself that is where the good stuff is, the comedy, the drama. That is Earth, our planet, and I truly miss it. But then I am dragged back o reality and then realize how proud I am of myself. I made it all the way up here. I am on the top of the world. I did it.