A joke that some people tell about space travel is, "There is not much space in space!" What this means is that there is not a lot of room on spacecraft for things or for people. Astronauts who go into space on the space shuttle live in an area about the size of a school bus. And, there are usually 6-7 astronauts on board for each trip into space. Some trips are very short, two weeks or less. But, in order to set up a habitat for humans to live on the Moon or on another planet like Mars, astronauts would have to travel and stay in space for a much longer period of time. For example, just to get to Mars, it could take almost 6 months! Can you imagine traveling non-stop on a school bus with six other people for 6 months?

Entry 26: In your Agronaut Log, write about 2 people that you would take with you if you went into space and had to travel for at least 9 months. What would be the good things about the trip? What would be some of the hard things about the trip?

Scientists on Earth want to know about what happens to living things in space. So, while astronauts are in space, they perform many experiments on small animals like mice, fish, microorganisms, and yes - on plants! And, all astronauts are experiments themselves. They keep details of their activities and monitor their physical fitness so that we better understand what happens to people in space.

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