• Question: Sleep. Do you need more or less or the same amout of it in space?

    Asked by purplebug123 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Great question!

      Humans need between 5 and 8 hours of sleep a night, wherever they are, and its not affected by being in sunlight all the time, or in space, or in a cave! This is probably because we have evolved on earth to be awake when it is light, and asleep when it is dark, and our nights last about 8 hours.

      But if you went to Mars, the days slightly more than 24 hours long, so over time your normal sleeping pattern would slip slightly out of synch…

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Quite a bit of research goes into this. The early space missions weren’t that long and the astronauts tended to catnat quite a bit as they had lots of important jobs to do. Some of them got long chances to sleep (4 hours or so) but all of them seemed to be ok, but quite tired, when they got back.

      The astronauts on the ISS generally sleep about 6 hours. You might think they work in shifts but normally everyone sleeps at the same time, they find they work better that way.

      Lots of scientists are interested in how zero gravity affects sleep patterns to they keep a good track on how the astronauts sleep. The ISS is the only chance we’ve had to look at the long term effects of living in space.

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