Astronauts are some of the most resourceful people on (and off) the planet.
Considering their extreme isolation, being able to solve life-threatening problems with limited resources is vital. When in space, the most mundane items can easily become the most important.
Just last month, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin made headlines for finding a year-old leak in the International Space Station; his instrument of choice was the humble tealeaf.
The hunt had begun more high-tech, with the ISS's three crew members isolating each individual room of the station and measuring pressure changes to locate the leak.
When this failed, they realised the breach must have been in the Zvezda module, their base of operations throughout the test.
Having narrowed it down, Ivanishin released some leaves from a teabag into the room and waited.
The astronauts watched as these slowly floated around, gradually sucked towards a scratch in the wall, which they then taped up.
Yes, trusty old duct tape
This isn't the first-time duct tape has been used in space. There are other parts to the space station that use it.
During Apollo 17, astronauts Gene Cerran and Jack Schmitt used duct tape to fix a damaged wheel arch on their moon buggy.
While certainly inventive, Ivanishin's method didn't carry much risk if it failed. This wasn't the case for the crew of Apollo 13, who owe their lives to a pair of socks.
On April 13, 1970, one of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks exploded, damaging the air, electricity and water systems.
The ship and its three-man crew were over 300,000 kilometres from Earth at the time.
As dramatised in the 1995 film, the astronauts were able to survive and return home by moving into the lunar landing module and jettisoning themselves from the rocket's main command module.
However, this craft wasn't designed for the number of people nor hours that they required to reach Earth, and carbon dioxide in the air rose to dangerous levels.
The crew had spare air filters from the command module, but these were square instead of the round shape that fitted the lunar module.
NASA engineers on the ground had to quickly design a 'mailbox rig' from available items - these included hoses from the astronauts' suits, duct tape, a bungee cord, and a pair of socks. This rig connected the square filters to the round hole, and the astronauts were able to safely return home.
Before they go to space, astronauts are thoroughly trained in all sorts of scenarios, and this experience can prove invaluable for them; Apollo 13's survival strategy was strongly influenced by one such training exercise. By combining their natural ingenuity with extensive preparation, astronauts are able to solve all sorts of problems, sometimes in quite unexpected ways.
"Have you turned it off and on again," is a famous phrase we have all heard from IT.
And sometimes, it does work even in space.
In 2018, NASA was having a number of issues that they couldn't fix on the Hubble Space Telescope. A restart of Hubble fixed it and got it back on sky.
