Clearing out the International Space Station 400 km above Earth

Your workbench in the shed may be a place of infinite clutter, where functionality gives way to disorder, but at the edges of infinity itself, astronauts seem to face the same problem.

Flinders University’s International Space Station Archaeological Project has documented several square meter sections of the ISS as used in orbit about 400 kilometers above Earth.

The sections marked with tape include a kitchen table, workstations, the wall next to the toilet and an area designated for maintenance. Photos of the squares are taken daily for two months.

Associate Professor Alice Gorman said archaeologists had discovered areas on the ISS that were intended for specific tasks but were in fact not being used for their intended purpose.

“In this maintenance area, maintenance was the least common activity,” she told ABC Radio Adelaide.

“The most common activity was storage, so people would put objects and items there to fix them there. When they came back they would find them in the same place and then use them in another part of the station.

Taking possession of the space

You may also notice at your workplace that a shared area, such as a bench or an unused closet, mysteriously ends up in the possession of a co-worker because they keep their belongings there.

This is also the case on the International Space Station, where an astronaut used an unintended space near the toilet and exercise areas to store his toiletry bag.

“By putting their toiletry bag there and leaving it there for so long, they actually made it their private space,” Ms Gorman said.

Such behavior may sound unremarkable or perhaps even superficial to us inhabitants of gravity, but the research is useful in considering future designs.

“It gives us insight into what the crew actually does and we want to use that to design better space stations for the future,” Ms Gorman said.

Defy gravity with Velcro

Led by Ms Gorman and Professor Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California, the team also observed astronauts overcoming weightlessness.

“In one square we studied, nearly half of all objects moving in and out were gravity substitutes such as Velcro fasteners, bungee cords, clips, carabiners and resealable plastic bags that hold objects in place instead of everything floating around,” Ms. Gorman said.

“In another square, it was 30 percent of all objects coming in and out. So if we extrapolate that to the entire station, we can see how frequently these objects are used.”

Sticky notes were also widely used throughout the ISS.

According to Ms Gorman, based on analysis of fieldwork and excavation results, most people believed that archaeology was firmly buried in the past.

“Most archaeologists don’t have the ability to say, ‘Hey, buddy. Your house was designed here 6,000 years ago – we have some ideas about how you could put those windows in a better location,'” she said.

“But we do it because we can say to NASA, other space agencies and big companies that design modules for space stations, that we actually know some things through archaeology that will help them design a better station, so we can influence the present.”