Questions to Ask an Astronaut
Good questions to ask an astronaut at a school visit, a public talk or an interview. The list opens with the ones astronauts are asked most (the view, launch, floating, the bathroom, sleep, food), then moves through daily life in orbit, the work and its risks, crew and family, coming home, and how the career happens.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Most asked
What does Earth look like from space?
Why ask it
Two details come up again and again: how thin the band of atmosphere looks at the edge of the planet, and that the lines on a map are mostly not there. Ask what surprised them at the window, since a plain request for the view gets the answer every audience has already heard.
What does launch feel like?
Why ask it
Expect a physical answer: noise, shaking, a weight on the chest that makes lifting an arm an effort, then straps and pencils floating the moment the engines cut off. The follow-up that works is what they were watching for, because the mind during launch is on a display and the next callout.
What does it feel like to be weightless?
Why ask it
The first days are rough for a lot of people: fluid moves up into the head, the face puffs, the nose blocks and the stomach often objects. An answer that goes straight to the fun of floating has skipped the part nobody films, so ask how long it took to feel well.
How do you go to the bathroom in space?
Why ask it
Airflow does the job gravity does at home: a funnel on a hose for one, a small seat with suction for the other, and foot restraints to hold you in place. Astronauts often say no question reaches them more, so nobody in the room needs to be shy about asking it.
How do you sleep in space?
Why ask it
On a station, usually in a sleeping bag tied to the wall of a cabin about the size of a phone booth, where no direction is down and a pillow has nothing to do. Good follow-ups are whether their arms drifted up in front of them and whether they slept as long as they do at home.
What do you eat in space, and does it taste the same?
Why ask it
Meals are mostly pouches and cans, rehydrated or warmed, and many crew members say flavors go dull with the stuffy head that weightlessness brings, which is why hot sauce is prized. The craving tends to be for something crisp or fresh. Ask about the day a cargo ship brought fruit.
What does space smell like?
Why ask it
Nobody can sniff a vacuum, so the answer is about what comes back inside: crew members have described a sharp smell on suits and airlock hardware after a spacewalk, often compared to hot metal or welding. Someone who never went outside can still tell you what a station smells like after months of people living in it.
How long did it take to get to space?
Why ask it
The surprise is how short the ride is: the climb to orbit is over in roughly ten minutes. Catching up with a station is the slow part, anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days depending on the flight, so ask how they passed that time and how much room there was to move.
Can you feel how fast you are going?
Why ask it
In orbit the answer is no. Once the engines cut off nothing is pushing on you, and a station laps the planet in about an hour and a half with no sense of motion inside. The speed only shows at the window, when a whole continent slides past in minutes.
Can you see more stars up there than from the ground?
Why ask it
It depends where they were looking and when. On the sunlit side the glare off the planet and the station washes the stars out, while on the night side with the cabin lights down crews describe a crowded sky that does not twinkle. Most children expect one answer and get two.
Is it true you get taller in space?
Why ask it
Yes, a little: with no weight pressing on it the spine stretches out, and the extra height goes again once they are back under gravity. Ask whether it hurt, because an aching back in the first days is a common complaint that seldom makes the school talk.
What was your favorite part of being in space?
Why ask it
Most answers come down to the window or to flying the length of a module with one push. To get past that, ask for the single day they would live again, which might be a spacewalk, a docking or a quiet Sunday watching the ground go by.
What did you miss most about Earth?
Why ask it
The answers are almost never grand. Rain, wind on skin, walking somewhere for no reason, cooking a meal. It is really a question about what ordinary life contains that you only notice when it is removed.
Do you think there is life somewhere else in the universe?
Why ask it
It comes up at most public events, and it goes better as an opinion question than as "have you seen aliens?", which has only one answer. Many astronauts are happy to say what they think and why. Hold it for the middle of a session: as an opener it asks them to guess in public before they have said a word about their own flight.
What do people most often get wrong when they ask you about space?
Why ask it
This invites a correction they have wanted to make for years, often about sound, gravity, temperature or how much of the flying is automated. It also tells you which questions not to spend your remaining time on.
What is the best question a child has ever asked you?
Why ask it
Astronauts do school visits for years and nearly all of them have a favorite. You get a story, a sense of what they enjoy being asked, and quite often a better question than the one you had planned next.
Daily life
What was the first thing you noticed in orbit that nobody had warned you about?
Why ask it
Training covers the big things, so what is left is small and odd: a pen drifting off the moment it is let go, the soles of the feet going soft from never being stood on, losing track of which wall was the floor. Because it asks for one moment, it gets a memory where "what surprised you?" gets a summary.
When did floating stop feeling strange?
Why ask it
The first week is usually clumsy, with too hard a push off one wall and a fast arrival at the next. Listen for the day they stopped thinking about up and down at all, which often comes as a story about eating dinner on the ceiling.
What is it like to watch the sun rise and set every ninety minutes?
Why ask it
A station crew gets around sixteen sunrises a day, so daylight is no use for telling the time and the whole station keeps one clock. Sleep is protected with lighting, a strict schedule and covered windows. Start with the spectacle, then find out how anyone gets to sleep.
How do you wash, brush your teeth and cut your hair?
Why ask it
A station has no shower and no sink, so the answers involve a damp cloth, shampoo that is never rinsed out, toothpaste swallowed or spat into a towel, and clippers attached to a vacuum hose. Younger audiences love this one, and adults find out how much planning a small job takes when water will not fall.
Where do the air and water come from?
Why ask it
On a station much of it is recycled on board, including the moisture from breath and sweat and, yes, urine, with cargo flights topping up the rest. Follow with whether knowing that changed how the water tasted. It nearly always gets a laugh and then a straight answer.
What happens to the trash?
Why ask it
Nothing can be thrown out of a window, so waste is bagged, stowed and loaded into a departing cargo craft, some of which are built to burn up on the way down. From here it is a short step to how little storage there is and how closely everything sent up is counted.
How do you exercise without gravity?
Why ask it
Bones and muscles weaken when they carry no load, so station crews train for a couple of hours most days on a treadmill, a bike and a machine that stands in for weights. The detail to go after is running while bungee cords hold you down to the belt.
Did you dream differently in space?
Why ask it
Not everyone has an answer, and that is part of its value, because nobody rehearses this one. Ask whether they floated or walked in their dreams and whether that switched partway through the mission. A shrug is a fine reply and your cue to move on.
What did you do with your time off?
Why ask it
Crews get evenings and part of the weekend, and the honest list is ordinary: the window, a call home, a movie, music, photographs. If they name the window, ask which part of the planet they used to wait for.
Could you find your hometown from the window?
Why ask it
Crew members describe learning the planet by its coastlines, rivers and lakes, and many go looking for home on a free evening. Cities are easiest at night, when they show up as light. Single buildings and walls are far harder to spot than people expect, which is the gentle answer to the Great Wall question.
Did you ever see an aurora or a thunderstorm from above?
Why ask it
Daylight views get the attention, yet plenty of crew members say the dark half of each orbit is what they kept going back for: lightning flickering across a whole storm system, auroras seen from above, coastlines drawn in streetlights. Pick one of those for your follow-up so the answer stays specific.
What did you bring from home?
Why ask it
The personal allowance is small and tightly limited, so each item was chosen over something else. A photograph, a child's toy, a flag or a musical instrument each opens a different story, and what had to stay behind can be as telling as what flew.
What is the funniest thing that happened on the mission?
Why ask it
Crews collect these: a tool that vanished and turned up weeks later behind a panel, dinner escaping across the cabin, a joke played on a new arrival. Keep it for when a room has gone solemn, and expect children to remember the answer longer than anything about orbits.
What is the hardest part of living in space that people never think about?
Why ask it
This is where the unglamorous list comes out: fans that never stop, no door to close, no fresh food, the same few faces for months. It gets further than a question about danger, which they have answered on every panel they have sat on.
The work
What did you work on day to day?
Why ask it
Most of a day in orbit goes on experiments, repairs, cleaning and unpacking cargo. Asking what they worked on, and not what they discovered, gets you an ordinary Tuesday, which is the part the press release leaves out.
How much of your day did the ground plan for you?
Why ask it
A station crew's working day is scheduled from the ground in small blocks, and living inside somebody else's timeline is a skill of its own. The revealing part is what happened when a task overran: who they told, and whether the plan bent.
Which experiment did you end up caring about most?
Why ask it
Astronauts run studies designed by researchers on the ground and are often the test subject themselves, giving blood or wearing sensors for weeks. Asking which one they cared about brings out a favorite, frequently something small such as a plant they were growing.
Did you go outside on a spacewalk, and what was the first minute like?
Why ask it
Not every astronaut does one, so ask before assuming. Those who have tend to describe the hatch opening onto nothing below their boots but the planet, followed almost at once by the first line of a very long task list.
What stops you from drifting away on a spacewalk?
Why ask it
Tethers, clipped and checked at every move, and on some suits a small jet pack as the last resort. Children ask this because it is the fear they would have themselves, which makes it a better school visit question than anything about danger in general.
What is it like to work inside a spacesuit for hours?
Why ask it
A pressurized suit is stiff, and every squeeze of a glove is effort against it, so sore hands and worn-out forearms come up more often than the view does. Find out how long they were outside and what they could eat or drink in that time, which is very little.
Did anything go wrong that you had to fix yourselves?
Why ask it
Long missions pile up repairs nobody planned, from a blocked toilet to a failed pump. The story shows the job as it is: working out a fix with the parts on board while a room full of engineers on the ground talks you through it.
What was the scariest moment of the mission?
Why ask it
Naming one moment gets an episode with a beginning and an end, where "were you scared?" gets a yes or a no. Notice how much of the answer is procedure. Crews are drilled on failures until the first reaction is to reach for the checklist, and the fear often turns up afterward.
What happens if someone gets sick or hurt up there?
Why ask it
There is a medical kit, crew trained to use it and doctors on call on the ground, but no hospital, so much of the answer is about staying healthy, starting with quarantine before launch. Leave their own medical history alone unless they raise it, since crew health is treated as private.
Crew and family
How do you live in close quarters with the same few people for months?
Why ask it
Crew compatibility is selected and trained for rather than left to luck, and the techniques transfer to Earth: raising irritations early, protecting shared meals, finding somewhere to be alone in a place with nowhere to go.
How well did you know your crewmates before launch?
Why ask it
Crews usually train together for a long stretch before a flight, and on a station they may come from several countries and space agencies. Ask which language was spoken at dinner and whose food got traded, and you will hear how a set of colleagues turned into a household.
How did you stay in touch with your family?
Why ask it
Station crews today can email, phone when the satellite link allows and see family on a scheduled video call, while someone who flew decades ago may have had far less. Ask who picked up, and what they talked about that had nothing to do with space.
What was launch day like for the people watching you go?
Why ask it
The crew has a job to do and the family has only the waiting, and astronauts often say the day was harder on the ground than in the seat. Ask what was said beforehand. If the reply gets short, take that as the sign to change the subject.
Did you spend a birthday or a holiday in orbit?
Why ask it
Long missions nearly always cross one, and the details are small and good: a food pouch saved for the day, a card hidden in the cargo months earlier, a call home at an odd hour. It reaches homesickness without asking about it head on.
Coming home
What was re-entry and landing like?
Why ask it
Returning crews describe a glow outside the window, a weight on the chest after months of none, and an arrival that ranges from a runway to a splash to a hard thump on the ground, depending on the vehicle. Ask what they could see and hear, and what the first breath of outside air smelled like.
What was the hardest part of coming home?
Why ask it
Readjustment is the part that gets left out. Balance takes time to return, gravity feels punishing for days, and some people let go of a cup expecting it to stay put. Some also describe a flat stretch once the mission is over, which few will raise unless asked.
What was the first thing you ate when you got back?
Why ask it
Quick, light and answerable by anyone who has flown, so it works as a breather after the heavier questions about landing. Some will tell you the first proper meal had to wait until their stomach and balance settled, and that detail is worth following.
Has being up there changed how you think about anything down here?
Why ask it
The wording asks for a change in thinking, not a revelation, so they can answer modestly. Some describe a lasting shift in how they see the planet, its weather and its borders. Others say plainly that they came back the same person, and that is worth hearing too.
What did you learn about yourself that you couldn't have learned on the ground?
Why ask it
One for a long interview, once the practical questions are done. The answers worth hearing name a limit: how they coped with months without privacy, a mistake made with the whole control room listening, or how much they needed the people at home.
If you could go back tomorrow, would you?
Why ask it
A closing question that gets an unguarded reaction, and the pause before the answer carries as much as the answer. Some say yes instantly, others weigh what a second mission would cost the people who waited through the first.
Career and future
Did you always want to be an astronaut?
Why ask it
Some decided at six watching a launch and others applied on a whim in their thirties, and both kinds get selected. The better half of the answer is when it started to look possible, the point where a wish turned into an application form.
What were you doing before you were selected?
Why ask it
Test pilot is only one of the routes in. Engineers, doctors, geologists, submariners and schoolteachers have all flown, and the earlier job usually shaped what they were given to do on the mission. For a student, this is the answer that makes the career look reachable.
How many times did you apply before you were chosen?
Why ask it
Plenty of astronauts were turned down at least once before a yes, and a few got in first time and will say so. What they changed between applications is more use to a hopeful applicant than any printed list of requirements.
How long did the training take, and what did it actually involve?
Why ask it
The gap between selection and a first flight is usually measured in years, and most of the training is not flying: language study, spacewalk rehearsals in a pool, robotics, and failure scenarios run until they are dull. This is where the job stops sounding glamorous.
Which school subject turned out to matter most?
Why ask it
Made for a classroom visit. Math and science are the expected reply, so listen for the surprise: a language, because crews train abroad, or swimming, or simply working in a team they did not pick.
What would you tell someone who wants your job?
Why ask it
The useful answers are unromantic: get properly good at something technical, stay fit, and expect to be turned down. Entry requirements differ from one space agency to the next, so ask what theirs looked for and what they would do differently.
What do you do now that the mission is over?
Why ask it
Flying is a small slice of an astronaut's career. Between and after missions they support other crews from the ground, test equipment, train newcomers or move on to other work. It is also a kinder way of asking whether they will fly again, which may not be theirs to decide.
Would you go to the Moon or Mars if you were asked?
Why ask it
A trip to Mars would mean years away with no quick way home, so this is not the same as asking whether they would repeat the flight they know. The reasons matter more than the yes or no. Listen for what they would need to be true of the crew, the ship and the people left behind.
What do you hope happens in spaceflight in your lifetime?
Why ask it
Add "and what worries you about where it is heading?" as a second question so the answer is more than promotion. Serving astronauts may stay diplomatic about programs and agencies, so accept a general reply and do not press for criticism they cannot make in public.
Talking with someone who has flown
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the conversation
Find out which missions they flew
A shuttle flight in the 1990s, a six-month station rotation and a suborbital hop are entirely different jobs. Mission name, duration and role are usually public, and knowing them stops you spending your limited time asking about the wrong one. Many of the notes on this page describe life on a space station, so someone who flew a short mission will answer some of them differently.
Pick from the groups, not down the page
Nobody gets through a list this long in one sitting. Most asked is the safe ground for a first question or a young audience, Daily life and The work hold the detail, Crew and family and Coming home are for when there is time and some trust, and Career and future is for students and anyone who wants the job. Choose two or three from the groups that fit, and keep one spare for when someone ahead of you asks yours.
Learn the handful of words you will hear
In technical company a spacewalk is an EVA and zero gravity is microgravity, and a spacecraft carries a crew, never passengers. Plain words are fine in a classroom or a microphone queue. Knowing both sets means you can follow the answer when the astronaut slips into the jargon.
Ask one question, then chase the detail in the answer
The standard questions have standard answers, delivered many times. The interesting material comes from your second and third question, so pick something specific out of what they just said and go after it.
Ask about their own experience, not the agency's position
Serving crew often cannot comment on budgets, future missions or colleagues, and pushing there produces a careful non-answer. First-person questions about what they saw and did are both more answerable and more interesting.
Adjusting for the setting
A school group
Children ask about food, bathrooms and vomiting, and those are good questions with vivid answers. Put the practical ones first, keep the pace fast, and leave anything about risk until the end so the session does not turn into a talk about accidents.
A public event with a microphone queue
You get one question and the room has heard the obvious ones. Something small and specific, asked in a single sentence, has a far better chance of a fresh answer than a broad request for what it was like.
A recorded interview
Agree in advance what is off limits, since crew health, other crew members and unflown missions are often constrained by employer rules. Confirm mission designations and dates in the room rather than reconstructing them later.
Sending a question to a crew in orbit
Space agencies, museums and schools sometimes run live sessions with a crew on the station and collect questions beforehand. How to submit one varies by agency and by event, so check the organizer's own page for how it works there. Keep it to one sentence that can be read aloud against the clock, and ask about living up there now, since the crew is answering from inside the mission.
What not to ask
- Anything inviting them to debunk a conspiracy theory. It is the most worn question in the field and it eats the answer you actually wanted.
- "Have you seen aliens?" as an opener. The fair version, whether they think there is life anywhere else, is on the list, and it goes better in the middle of a session.
- Questions about the cost of the space program, as though the person in front of you set the budget.
- Disaster comparisons. Crews who lost colleagues will raise it if they want to, and it is not a warm-up topic.
- Assuming everyone on a crew did the same job, or that the pilot did the science and the scientist did the flying.
- "What was it like?" as your main question. It is too large to answer, so you will get the version everybody gets.