These 3 people will be social distancing 250 miles from Earth

On Thursday, three astronauts will launch from Kazakhstan to make their way to the International Space Station, and the team has been "super vigilant" so as not to bring the novel coronavirus with them.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian astronauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner will orbit Earth four times, reaching their destination six hours later, per NASA.

Having to quarantine is nothing new to astronauts. Even when there isn't an ongoing global pandemic, they are required to isolate for two weeks before launching to ensure they don't bring an illness with them, The Verge reports. But this time, when they entered quarantine, so did the rest of the world, Cassidy said.

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In a normal quarantine, the astronauts could have gone to restaurants as long as they were "smart" about where they went, Cassidy told the press, but this time they were isolated to their cottages and only allowed to go get essential food.

Cassidy thought he'd be able to say goodbye to his wife on the day of the launch, but due to the pandemic, she headed back home. The crowds cheering on the astronauts and the media coverage will be noticeably absent on launch day, too. "It'll be completely quiet. There won't be anybody there," Cassidy said, per The Verge. "We'll just kind of walk out. Maybe we'll still play the music and fire the three of us up ourselves. But who knows?"

But even in space, Cassidy can't escape the reality of what is happening on Earth. "I certainly am not going to be disengaged from it thinking it's not my problem," he said. "My family is living it and my friends and my co-workers are living it in real time."

Read more at The Verge.