If you're curious how astronauts keep up their hygiene routines without gravity, you're in luck. International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield has answered the tooth brushing part of that equation in a new YouTube video.
Obviously there's no running water in space, due to the aforementioned lack of gravity, so you can't have a tap or sink. Instead, the astronauts make a little ball of water to wet their tooth brush. And how do they get rid of the tooth paste after they're done brushing? I'll let you see that for yourself.
Give the video a watch below, via the Canadian Space Agency.
Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, and also the first Canadian to walk in space. He is a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, and has so far flown two space shuttle missions. He was also the capsule communicator for both Space Shuttle and International Space Station expeditions.
He is currently serving as the commander of the International Space Station as part of Expedition 35, after the crew of Expedition 34 departed. In addition to his ISS duties, Hadfield is also working on his first original music album, which he will record in orbit during his free time. The first recorded song off the album, Jewel in the Night, was released on YouTube on Christmas Eve 2012. He also recorded a collaboration with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked ladies titled I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing?), which first aired on the CBS Radio program.
Expedition 35 also includes flight engineers Thomas Marshburn, and Roman Romanenko, of NASA and RSA respectively; as well as Christopher Cassidy, Pavel Vinogradov, and Aleksandr Misurkin, who arrived after.
It is only the second time an ISS crew has not been led by either a NASA astronaut or Roscosmos cosmonaut, the first being 2009's Expedition 21 led by ESA's Frank de Winne. The expedition began on March 13, 2013.
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