Think about the simple pleasure of a hot shower after a long day. Now imagine you're floating hundreds of miles above Earth, where water doesn't fall. It drifts. It clings. It wanders off in wobbly little balls. How on earth, or off it, do astronauts stay clean?
Here's the surprise: today's astronauts don't shower at all. The International Space Station has no shower. Instead, crew members clean themselves with wet wipes or a small jet of water, using soap squeezed from a tube much like toothpaste. Rinse-free shampoo and even edible toothpaste help save precious water.
A Sponge Bath in Orbit
On the station, a typical wash is a sponge bath. Astronauts use one cloth to wash and another to rinse. Because of surface tension, water and soap bubbles cling to the skin instead of falling away, so very little water is needed.
Hair gets the same treatment. Special no-rinse shampoos mean astronauts can wash without a flood of water floating around the cabin. Every bit of water counts on the station, which even turns urine into drinking water through its water recovery system.
Water is precious for another reason, too. The station's main oxygen system makes breathable oxygen by splitting water, using about a liter per crew member each day. That water is either brought up from Earth or recycled from other systems, so nobody wants to waste it on a long, splashy wash.
The Skylab Shower Experiment
There was a time when astronauts did shower in space. NASA's Skylab station, used in 1973 and 1974, had a zero-gravity shower. It looked like a cylinder of curtain running from floor to ceiling, with foot restraints on the floor and a vacuum to suck up the water.
Using it was quite a project. An astronaut filled a pressurized bottle with warm water and attached it to the ceiling, pulled up the curtain, sprayed down, soaped up, rinsed, and then vacuumed up every drop. Each shower used about 6 pints of water, and supplies allowed just one shower per person per week.
The first astronaut to try it was Paul Weitz. He said it took a fair amount longer to use than you might expect, "but you come out smelling good." Counting setup and cleanup, a Skylab shower took about two and a half hours. Drying off in weightlessness was tricky, too, and later crews mostly used wet washcloths instead.
The Russians Tried Too
Soviet space stations had showers as well, starting with Salyut 3 in the early 1970s. Crews complained about how complicated they were, and by the early 1980s, on Salyut 6, showering had been cut back to about once a month.
The Mir station had an improved shower called the Bania. It still took so long to set up, use, and pack away that it was later turned into a steam room, and eventually its plumbing was removed so the space could be used for something else.
Clean Enough to Fly
Space bathrooms have come a long way in other ways, too. On early missions, the facilities were so uncomfortable that astronauts ate less than half their available food to avoid using them. Today's station has three toilets that use a powerful airflow instead of water.
So the next time you step into a warm shower, take a moment to enjoy it. For the people living in orbit, a damp washcloth and a squeeze of soap from a tube is about as close as it gets, and they can't wait for that first real shower back home.
