Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, a group of astronauts and cosmonauts--from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan--have left their lives behind to travel through space at over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and. . .