Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield has made it a part of his five month mission to educate about space, science and the International Space Station through a series of videos about daily life in space. In this one, he shows us how astronauts sleep on the ISS.

In case you’ve missed any of his fascinating reports, he’s also shown us how to wash our hands, brush our teeth, how we use math in space, how microgravity effects the body — how eyesight is affected and how food tastes — as well as what it’s like to cry in space: 

Be sure to watch all of Commander Hadfield’s Expedition 34/35 videos.

From PBS’ Digital Studios, It’s Okay to Be Smart’s The Auroras, Earth’s Art Show! Learn More about the invisible forcefield — a magnetic field — that protects all life on Earth from space radiation, primarily Sun’s solar winds that bombard our atmosphere constantly. 

jtotheizzoe:

All that science has a beautiful side effect: It makes the auroras! The Northern and Southern lights are the result of the solar wind and its dance with Earth’s magnetic field and polar atmosphere. It’s like our own cosmic light show!

Watch more about space weather and magnetic fields, plus dont’ miss this fabulous-looking vid about how the aurora borealis is created in our archives.

We’ve seen this experiment a few times before, but never with Hello Kitty “catonaut” in a Japanese rocket made by a 12-year-old. And perhaps not with such a glorious pop:

NASA doesn’t have a lock on space exploration anymore. Just ask Lauren Rojas, a seventh grader in Antioch, Calif., who recently launched a balloon to 93,625 feet using a do-it-yourself balloon kit from High Altitude Science…

The project is a terrific illustration of just how accessible the near-space environment has become. High Altitude Science was founded two years ago by Joseph Maydell, a flight controller for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who wanted everyone to experience the beautiful views of the planet that he got to see in the course of his work.

Not only does Maydell sell a kit and a flight computer on his site, but he also includes tutorials to get started with.

From the archives, more views of Earth’s curvature. 

via Scientific American.

Life’s daily little details get interesting when you live in microgravity. For example, how do astronauts wash their hands in space? ISS Commander and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrates how. Hint: It involves grabbing a floating ball of liquid!

If you liked this, you’ll definitely want to go on a tour of the international space station with Commander Sunita Williams! Commander Hadfield has also demonstrated how astronauts clip their nails in space and what mixed nuts look like in space. Follow @Cmdr_Hadfield on Twitter.

In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station’s modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.

So good… 25 minutes of it!

via Devour.