With no defined days or nights, just a succession of sunrises and sunsets every 90 minutes, astronauts follow a strict schedule. Despite the challenges, they can enjoy spectacular views of Earth, a floating sphere in space. According to sources from the International Space Station (ISS), this is what an astronaut's workday looks like.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore's space adventure has come to an end, surrounded by political controversy. The two landed on the coast of Florida at 10:11 p.m. Tuesday, Spanish time, after months in space. The two astronauts "are not trapped" nor are they returning to Earth "on any rescue mission.", NASA has insisted on saying several times. But the fact is that Williams and Wilmore have spent nine months on the International Space Station (ISS), when their visit was scheduled to last only eight days. They went to test Boeing's new ship, but anomalies were detected in the device and it was decided that it should return empty to Earth, while they awaited a new passage back home. It took nine months.

Since won the Booker Prize thanks to Orbital, Samantha Harvey's (Kent, 1975) diary has been filling up, and for now it is almost a feat to get to speak to her. Even so, the English author lives far from the media pressure, and not even the literary award, one of the most prestigious today, has managed to get her to buy a mobile phone. She speaks to us from the 16th century house where she lives, on the outskirts of Bath. It was there that she wrote her latest novel, in which she recounts a single day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station. While they orbit the Earth, the characters in the novel areOrbital (Edicions 62 / Anagrama; Catalan translation by Ernest Riera) concentrate on their jobs – such as cultivating protein crystals, monitoring microbes or investigating muscle decline –, they remember why they wanted to travel to outer space and, above all, they gaze in wonder at the unique and fragile planet.