How do astronauts in the ISS know which way is up? Does it matter?
In: Planetary Science
It only matters when reading control panels and such mounted to the walls and for navigating through branching modules where junctions could be up/down or right/left or forward/backward all depending on your orientation.
Generally things are oriented alike for the most part just so the astronauts don’t have to constantly reorient themselves when moving from one thing to the next, but that’s the only real reason it would matter.
There isn’t any up or down in space, so it doesn’t matter. For convention, they refer to the side of the station facing the Earth as the “deck” and the opposite side as the “overhead”, but there is no floor or ceiling and no up or down. The astronauts can and do use all surfaces for all purposes. For example, in one of the modules, there are 4 sleep stations on each wall, which, if you were on Earth, would mean that someone sleeps on the floor, 2 people sleep on each wall, and one person sleeps on the ceiling. But since they’re in microgravity, it doesn’t matter.
There is no up, and it does not matter.
however humans like up, so all of the space stations lighting is mounted on 1 side to give an illusion of up. Up is the direction the light is comming from
Why don’t you just go watch a video tour of the astronauts on Youtube? There are plenty of them these days.
Up/Down in space is not relevant. Well except for maybe to give each other directions and then it’s just an agreed upon thing.
Like say the blue workstation is on the ceiling. Then you refer to the stuff on rest of the walls as left, right or down.
Really, every surface in low G or non G is a wall.
Do relatives matter in Alabama?
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