How to wash your hair in space

KAREN NYBERG, Expedition 36 Crew Member: Hi there! I've had a lot of people ask me how I wash my hair in space, and I thought I’d show you how I do it.

Let’s see … to get started, these are the things I need. A bag of warm water, a little no-rinse shampoo, a towel, and my comb. What I like to do is start by just putting some hot water, squirting it onto my scalp, and I have a mirror here so I can watch what I’m doing. Sometimes the water gets away from you, and you try and catch as much as you can.

Then I just work the water up through to the ends of my hair. Then I take my no-rinse shampoo and squirt it also on the scalp, just a little bit, and rub it in. Again, just working it up to the ends. Sometimes I’ll take my comb to help work it all the way to the ends.

Then I like to take my towel while I have the shampoo in there, and just kind of work it. Because without standing under running water, you kinda need to use the towel a little bit to help get some of the dirt out.

I like to follow that by a little more water. It’s called no-rinse shampoo, but I think it’s best to use a little bit of water with it.

It actually feels kind of squeaky clean right now!

Then I’ll take the dry part of my towel. We use towels for quite a while here, since we have limited supplies. We use them wisely.

There, I think that’s pretty good! And now as my hair dries, as the water evaporates from my hair, it will become humidity in the air, and then our air-conditioning system will collect that into condensate, and it won’t be long and our water-processing system will turn that into drinking water.

At the end I just do one final comb through to make sure there are no snarls and snags, and while it dries I like to let it stay free. I don’t put it back in a ponytail while it’s drying.

And that is how I wash my hair in space on the International Space Station.