Penza, 3 November 2014. PenzaNews. Elena Serova, an ISS-41/42 astronaut, provided an example of how the International Space Station inhabitants get haircuts with the assistance of her colleague Alexander Samokutyaev, who was born in Penza.

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On Monday, November 3, Elena Serova published a new entry in the Roskosmos blog titled “Haircuts and weight measurements in zero-G.”

“It’s haircut time on the ISS!” she wrote, and published two photos where Alexander Samokutyaev is shown sitting in front of a big mirror while she is standing behind him with a hair clipper.

Elena Serova explained that “there are no surreal barber robots on the space station”: the astronauts are using a regular hair clipper attached to a vacuum cleaning machine to keep their looks in check.

“And if you want to measure your weight in zero-G conditions, they have invented special space scales. They look like a chair with springs. To know your weight, an astronaut sits on the scales comfortably, turns them on and swings on them: the motors make the platform move around, and the electronics measure the periods of damped periodic vibrations affected by the mass: quite an amusement, isn’t it?” Elena Serova added.

As PenzaNews agency reported earlier, The crew of Soyuz TMA-14M space ship with the commander Alexander Samokutyaev and flight engineers Elena Serova and Barry Wilmore was launched on the night of September 26, 2014, and successfully docked with the ISS at 6.11 am.

The crew plans to work on the station for 168 full days. Their agenda includes 52 researches and experiments, space station maintenance and installation of new equipment brought by cargo spaceships.

Alexander Samokutyaev and Maksim Suraev made their second open space visits during the ISS missions. As of now, Maksim Suraev has spent 9 hours 25 minutes in the outer space, while Alexander Samokutyaev has worked in the vacuum for 10 hours 4 minutes.