Reaching space is often romanticized, but the reality involves a brutal fight against physical forces that compress the lungs and shift bodily fluids. The transition from standing on Earth to orbiting at 28,500 km/h happens in less than nine minutes, forcing the body to adapt to a world without a natural sense of up or down.

We dive into the technical details of orbital maneuvering and the daily life of an astronaut on the ISS. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla explains how space stations function as closed-loop ecosystems and why the psychological resilience of the crew is just as important as the structural integrity of the spacecraft.

• The sensation of "free fall" and why satellites don't simply fall back to Earth.
• Managing "space sickness" and sensory conflicts during the initial adaptation period.
• The engineerin ...