Keeping Mitzvot in Outer Space

Rabbi Ben Tzion Firrer [5730 issue of Noam]:
Summary: Mitzvot are only applicable on earth, because Torah says:

These are the statutes and judgments, which you shall take care to do, in the land [ba- aretz], which the Lord God of your fathers gives you to possess all the days that you live upon the earth [ha-adamah]. [Deuteronomy 12:1]

Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch, Teshuvot Vehanhagot, 5:84

It seems that since we have received the Torah with the times as they are in our world, someone who leaves this world absolves himself of the mitzvot that are dependent on time, such as Shabbat, the holidays or the daily Shema and prayers. But it is prohibited to absolve oneself of the Torah’s obligations, for we are servants of the Holy One, blessed be He, and are obligated to keep His commandments.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Halperin, Im Esak Shamayim, p. 22 - REJECTED PROPOSAL

We can indeed consider each time the shuttle orbits the globe (90 minutes) as one complete day, including both a nighttime and a daytime period. Based on this, there will end up being sixteen complete “days” within a twenty-four hour period. This would follow the biblical verse (Bereishit [Genesis] 1:5), “It was evening and it was morning, one day,” that teaches us that a nighttime period followed by a daytime makes up one complete “day.”

In line with this approach the astronaut would, apparently, have to read the Shema thirty-two times in a twenty-four hour period…he would have to put on tefillin once every hour and a half…pray forty-eight prayers (every twenty-four hour period)…According to this calculation he will have at least two Shabbatot every twenty-four hour period, each one an hour and a half long…

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Halperin, Im Esak Shamayim, p. 41

Therefore, everywhere on the globe – where the Creator set and imprinted the order of creation based on the paths of the Earth, sun, and moon – all of Torah’s time-bound mitzvot are applicable… That is not true in space, where the laws of creation and the order of time are totally different, and are not bound at all by the system of day and night – and the time that flows from it – based on the path of the earth, sun, moon, and the relations between all of them.

...It therefore seems obvious that with regards to space…essentially, the mitzvot, laws, and obligations dependent on day and night, the week, month, and year are not applicable. For these mitzvot are only applicable to one living in a place that is following the laws of creation and the order of time on the globe – not to someone living with a totally different time system.

Nevertheless, it is very logical that on a rabbinic level, a person is obligated to fulfill these mitzvot, so that he should not lose consciousness of these mitzvot.