14 DAY TRIAL // In a new video released by NASA, three members of the Expedition 29 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen floating inside the orbital lab as the entire spacecraft is performing an orbital reboost maneuver.
This process compensates for the small orbital delay that all objects in orbit experience. The station has a number of thrusters that it can use in order to climb higher in low-Earth orbit (LEO). However, as this happens, astronauts are not taken along for the ride.
As evident in the video, the acceleration the ISS experiences is not transmitted to the astronauts within if the latter are not in direct contact with the spacecraft's structure. In other words, they are left behind as the station accelerates.
The video shows Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum (NASA) and flight engineers Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA) and Sergei Volkov (RosCosmos) floating freely inside a station module.