We already have a pretty good idea of how astronauts go to the bathroom. (It involves a vacuum cleaner and true grit.) We know how they eat. (Acrobatically.) We even know how they sleep. (Restrained to a wall because you’d have to be insane to eat and go to the bathroom in space.)
But, do you know how they do their laundry? Neither do they.
To date, they’ve been living the high life, wearing their underwear fresh out of the pack and then incinerating them. But, a new washing machine on the International Space Station could force them to live like the rest of us: wearing each pair until they run out, putting on swim trunks and washing them in a new low-power, low- water washing machine.
At least now we know that our collection of astronaut undies were a fraud.