I Used to Work at NASA. I Have Some Insights About Sex in Space.
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“We hear almost everything,” my friend and NASA colleague, a program scientist for the International Space Station, told me over lunch one day. She was explaining various Mission Control safety measures for monitoring astronauts’ health, psychological state, and overall comfort. “Flight controllers are always paying attention, for safety.”
“You must hear all sorts of stupid stuff: burps, farts, hiccups, diarrhea,” I responded. “They’re human, after all.”
“We do.”
“Wow,” I leaned in. “Really? You’re the perfect person to finally tell me the truth.”
For as long as I worked in science communication at NASA, people had always asked the same two questions about human space flight. First, they wanted to know about bathroom stuff, which was easy to answer—NASA folks were open about oopsies, broken bathrooms, and diapers, aka Maximum Absorbency Garments. But after the poopy talk, people wanted to know about the sex.
People have been interested in space sex since at least 1992, when the first and only married astronaut couple joined the 50th Space Shuttle mission and cohabited in space together. After that, concerns around the physics of erections and hormone levels in microgravity began to percolate, leading to even more curiosity about astronauts’ private lives. This has been particularly true for Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who recently returned to Earth after being stuck in the International Space Station together for nearly 10 months. They’re not in a relationship and there’s no evidence that they were intimate, but there has still been speculation about zero-gravity passion. In fact, they piqued so much interest that when I responded to a question about space travel on TikTok the other day, it went massively viral. More than 9,000 people commented, many of whom were desperate to know about sex in space.
I, too, have always been fascinated. As a science writer who specialized in earth and climate science, what I learned from NASA’s Human Research teams about the effects of microgravity on the human body was both fascinating and grotesque. More than just bone density loss and muscle wasting, I found out that an astronaut’s fingernails can fall off and that their retinas thicken.
But what about the extracurriculars? When the Space Shuttle program was active, astronauts would spend somewhere between five and 16 days in orbit. But a typical length of stay on the International Space Station is about six months, and some stay as long as 300 days or more. That’s a long time to go without, especially if you take into consideration that over 60 percent of adults have had a workplace romance. There had to be some sort of chemistry up there. Of the 676 people who’ve left Earth’s gravity, wouldn’t at least a few of them be eager to join the 250-mile-high club?
“What about the rumors?” I whispered to my colleague through the din of cafeteria noise. “The astronauts have to be hooking up. If there’s audio, you’ve heard them having sex, right? Moaning?”
She paused for a bite, then looked at her sandwich to avoid eye contact with me.
“Come on,” I slapped the table. “Tell me. This isn’t the Alien movie.” I lowered my voice again. “In space, anyone can hear you come.”
“I don’t have authority to disclose that information,” she said with a smirk. Then she turned away and began giggling like a maniac. She’d said it without saying it: Yes, sex happens. Yes, NASA can hear them. And no, they’ll never admit it.
That always bothered me. Why was sex in space one of those nudge-nudge, wink-wink NASA legends that everyone knew about, but no one would disclose or admit? I’d always thought that a more open NASA would be good for the agency and good for science.
But at NASA, withholding information was the norm. I saw cover-ups firsthand when, in 2017, I presented at South by Southwest, the high-profile technology and media conference. NASA HQ sent me a list of talking points that included instructions to “Pivot away from the subject of the question to give the reporter a related NASA positive.” A week later, when Donald Trump proposed funding cuts for three NASA Earth Science missions as well as NASA’s Education Office, HQ responded with, “Don’t say anything or respond to any emails. Celebrate funding for Mars and solar system instead.”
On top of the secrecy, most people forget that astronauts on the Space Station are international (it was Canadian Chris Hadfield who went viral with his version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”). As of March 21, the Expedition 73 crew consists of three NASA astronauts: Anne McClain, Jonny Kim, and Nichole Ayers; three Russian cosmonauts: Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, and Alexey Zubritsky; and one Japanese astronaut, commander Takuya Onishi.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the rendezvous in space were between people from different countries, but NASA’s American astronauts tend to be pretty straitlaced. The Russians have vodka, and the Italians have a specially designed espresso machine, but our astronauts are stuck with orange-flavored powdered drink mix, which tells you everything you need to know about the differences between the space programs.
In fact, aside from a few male astronauts who’ve opened up about things like space erections, the whole culture at NASA is prude. One report by the space agency suggested that missions to Mars could be all-female to avoid astronauts having sex during the long journey, as if NASA didn’t realize that obviously the women could have sex with each other. Besides, there’s always masturbation. I’m certain someone could figure out how to manage that quietly if they wanted to. The prospect of observing low-gravity ejaculation, be it your own or someone else’s, seems irresistible, even if afterward you had to chase down the droplets with tissues.
As far as logistics go, missionary position wouldn’t exist in the microgravity environment. There are also concerns that in a micro- or low-gravity situation, two people pushing against each other could float away. This means that sexy time in space would most likely need to occur inside an astronaut’s quarters, which are phone-booth-size private cabins with sleeping bags strapped to the wall. Kinky, with or without a partner. That said, much of the Space Station is covered in Velcro, which would be useful for doing it up against the wall. Astronauts could squeeze together into one of the small sleeping bags, or strap themselves together, or push against each other by bracing their arms and legs against the sides of their cabin. Sounds exciting to me.
Researchers have proposed studying sex in space, but so far, the only documented case is a pornographic science-fiction film called The Uranus Experiment. If NASA wasn’t so uptight,
I could provide more specifics. But as an insider, I’m now convinced it’s true: They do have sex on the Space Station. Just don’t expect NASA to ever admit it.
