Tim Peake, while describing his experiences as an astronaut in his recently published book Ask an Astronaut: My Guide to Life in Space, talks about the grossest thing about living in space and turns out, it’s not what we thought it would be.
According to him, the thing that makes you cringe the most while living in space is watching the skin on the sole of your feet fall apart. The accumulation of all that dead skin on your feet makes it hard to take off your socks as the dead skin will be all over the cabin and it will hang around until being eaten up by the air filters, making you the stinkiest member of the crew.
Even more disgusting is the fact that astronauts tend to develop ‘lizard feet’ at the top of their toes during the course of their voyage as a result of them constantly hooking their feet under the metal handrails, bungees and straps to stabilize their bodies while working, which causes their skin to become scaly.
Specially designed socks are under experiment by European Space Agency. These socks have a very soft rubber coating on the top of toes and can help astronauts to some extent. But till that time, feet issues will continue to haunt astronauts on space missions!