Sunita's official Nasa photo ahead of her first flight in 2006

I’ve spent a total of 321 days, 17 hours and 15 minutes in space over seven different missions – my last mission in 2012 lasted for almost four months. Was I ready to leave by the end of it? No. I’d have loved to have stayed for longer. Of course you miss people back on Earth, particularly my husband, but time goes by so fast. Each time you go into space you never know if it’s going to be your last trip – you simply might never get the opportunity again. The way I see it, I’ve already lived 40-something years on Earth so spending just one of the ones I have left in space isn’t a huge deal. I love this planet, though. When I’m in space, I miss rain. I miss the breeze. I miss smelling dirt. I miss going for a walk with my dog. And I miss food that isn’t rehydrated.

All the meals we have on board are already dehydrated and drinks are powdered. We add water to them through a tube and, if it’s a hot meal, heat them in a convection oven. You usually put each packet of food in a container that’s attached to a table with Velcro and straps. Like anything else, food can float. Which can be fun when you eat dried fruit out of the air like a fish, but is more of a problem with something hot like coffee. We drink through a straw with a safety clamp. When you’re not taking a sip, you need to make sure it’s locked or you’ll end up with a sphere of hot coffee floating above your head. We eat three times a day, and they’re not bad at all – lasagne, sweet and sour tofu, BBQ beef brisket. We might be on board with Russians and Japanese, so all tastes are catered for. However there’s probably about 16 days’ worth of food and then the menu starts to repeat itself. Luckily we have a lot of sauces to change things up. You become quite reliant on garlic paste.

Nobody wears shoes in the space station unless they’re exercising on the treadmill or exercise bike. Every second you’re in space, your body is deteriorating – when your muscles and bones are no longer working against gravity, it causes them to shrink – so you have to exercise. We do an hour of aerobic exercise a day to keep up cardiovascular activity and an hour of resistance training to recreate the load that we work against every day on Earth just by competing with gravity. You can’t stop working out. You’d lose weight quickly and your bones might even deteriorate to the point where they won’t be able to regenerate back on Earth. It’s essential to maintain bone density and muscle mass. I’ve run marathons and triathlons in space with my colleagues handing me oranges and cheering me on.

We have separate clothes for exercise and then get changed into our regular work gear, a practical ensemble of socks, T-shirt and cargo pants. Practicality is key. We’re not just astronauts and scientists up there, we’re the plumbers and the electricians too, keeping up the maintenance of the station, so zip pockets are pretty useful to stop things floating off. I’ll usually Velcro my iPad to my leg [the ISS has had a live internet connection since 2010]. We don’t do laundry in space. We wear the same outfit for a week and then downgrade it to an exercise outfit before throwing it away (rubbish is kept in sealed bags and brought back to Earth). You really don’t get that stinky up in space because there just isn’t the dirt that there is down on Earth. It’s not completely sterile and there are slightly gross aspects, like if you lose the callouses from the bottom of your feet, little pieces of dry skin fly around. But there’s a ventilation system which keeps all of that stuff going in the right direction and you feel pretty clean most of the time. Of course, we still sweat after exercise so we ‘shower’ every day using warm water from a pouch and bodywash on a wet towel. Washing your hair is a bit of a hassle because if you don’t do it carefully then little water bubbles will go floating off everywhere. I use a no-rinse shampoo, although the Russians have a rinse-off herbal version. Hair is fairly easy to maintain in space – it floats too so it’s not falling down in front of your face and getting in your way.

One giant leap for womankind