There was much excitement in P2 this week as we were put through our paces trying the various tasks that astronauts might have to perform living on board the International Space Station. We started with the tricky challenge of using our ‘space gloves’. Not the easiest of equipment we realised as we tried to fit solar panels together to power the station as well as radiator panels to take the heat away.  Trickier still was trying to fit nuts onto bolts with a screwdriver when wearing thick, padded space gloves, and looking through a visor at the same time! Luckily, we had the ground crew in NASA’s mission control giving us instructions and we managed to get the job done. We had the fiddly task of creating a chain to attach ourselves to when venturing outside the station.  We stuck at this with determination and created some impressively long chains. We then had to put on our spacesuits and venture outside the ISS on a spacewalk to repair some of the equipment. We wore belts with carabiners tethered to a handrail and had to make sure we did not unclip both carabiners at the same time or we would have floated away! Safely back inside the station we were given the unenviable task of sucking up ‘poo’ and depositing it in the ‘trash’ module!  Whilst there was much fun to be had we concluded that life must be quite challenging for an astronaut!