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Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has offered a unique glimpse into daily life aboard the International Space Station (ISS), using a viral video to explain the counterintuitive reality of “falling forever.” The astronaut, whose footage shows a camera and a lens floating freely, revealed how objects and crewmates feel weightless because they are in a constant state of orbit around the Earth.
Video Illustrates Life In Zero-G
In a video uploaded to X, Shukla is filmed swapping a camera lens as two cameras drift around him seemingly effortlessly. He takes the lens off one of the cameras and releases it, but instead of dropping it, the gear just floats in mid-air. He reassembles the lens and releases the camera again, which stays suspended similarly.
“Believe it or not – All that you see in this frame is falling,” Shukla posted in the explanation, employing the visual demonstration to illustrate that objects on the ISS are not actually weightless.
Believe it or not- Everything you see in this frame is falling.Â
When I first reached the International Space Station, I had this strange hesitation: if I let go of something, won’t it just fall? On Earth, that’s exactly what happens. In space, though, my early instinct was to… pic.twitter.com/odCq0Dh8Xy
— Shubhanshu Shukla (@gagan_shux) September 23, 2025
Dispelling The Myth Of Zero Gravity
Against all odds, Shukla revealed that astronauts do not feel weightless due to the absence of gravity. Actually, gravity at the altitude of the ISS is still approximately 90% as intense as it would be on Earth’s surface. The feeling of being weightless, he continued, is because both the space station and the astronaut are falling together around the planet at the same velocity.
He linked the idea of orbit to physicist Isaac Newton’s famous thought experiment, which says that if you toss a ball quickly enough from a high mountain, it will continue to fall around the Earth without ever touching it. “It’s falling forever, but it never hits the ground,” he wrote.
Overcoming Earth-Bound Instincts
Shukla acknowledged that his early days on the ISS were a battle to overcome habits learned on Earth. He admitted to holding back before releasing objects, anticipating that they would fall as they do on the planet’s surface. His first reaction was to pass items gingerly to his fellow crew members, who did the same, resulting in what he termed an “overly careful game of ‘hot potato.'”
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