Praying from Space

I know that once in class we talked about how Muslims pray in different parts of the world, and how they usually face Mecca while in prayer. I just read an interesting article about the difficulties of Muslim prayer from space. Since Muslims pray five times a day at different times according to the position of the sun and the definition of a day. In space, astronauts go around Earth one time every 90 minutes. Will this count for one day? It seems very tricky. Also, it is almost impossible to pin point where exactly the city of Mecca is when you are way up there. The guy interviewed in the article said that just facing Earth will probably be good enough. I guess that about 150 scientists, astronauts, religious scholars and academics are gathered in Malaysia for an “Islam and Life in Space” seminar. Sounds like a great time. 

Malaysian Muslim astronauts took off with the Russians soon after this article was published in 2006.