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The International Space Station will welcome seven crew members throughout the holiday season, the highest number ever for the orbiting laboratory in its 20 years with humans living on board.
The international crew includes NASA astronauts Kate Rubins, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker; Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi; and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov.
The international crew will take the day’s work on the space station and sit down for a special meal together, as well as call home to talk with friends, family and loved ones.
“I’m very happy to be on the space station this year because I can share American traditions with my international teammates,” Walker said. She hinted that they might broadcast football games, another Thanksgiving tradition. This is his second Thanksgiving in space; she was also on the space station in November 2010.
The menu includes cornbread dressing, smoked turkey, green beans and mashed potatoes. Noguchi brought special Japanese “party food” to share, including curried rice, red bean rice, and special seafood that a Japanese high school student on Earth prepared for the crew.
“The year 2020 is a difficult year, but it is also the year of perseverance and resilience and I truly hope that each of you will cherish every moment with your friends and family,” Noguchi said. The names of the Perseverance rover and the SpaceX Crew-1 Resilience capsule, both launched this year, seem even more meaningful to the crew during the pandemic.
For Hopkins, it’s his second Thanksgiving in space after spending the holidays at the train station in 2013.
“For me, Thanksgiving is all about the family,” Hopkins said. “This year I am spending it with my international family. We all feel very lucky to be here and we are very grateful for everything we have.”
Holidays away from Earth
Astronauts have marked the tradition of celebrating vacations in space since the days of the Apollo mission, when the Apollo 8 crew shared their Christmas Eve message on a live TV broadcast in 1968 by reading to take turns the book of Genesis in the Bible.
How this holiday is marked and celebrated depends on each crew and space veterans tend to share their suggestions and ideas with recruits before they depart, NASA astronaut Dr Andrew told CNN. Morgan.
Morgan spent the entire holiday season on the space station in 2019 alongside teammates Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Skripochka and Luca Parmitano.
Turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes are part of the standard menu for NASA astronauts in space, but they’ve also kept special treats like smoked salmon and cranberry sauce to share with each other. other. In space, the cranberry sauce perfectly retains the shape of the box it came in. Meir and Koch also made hand-made turkeys for their table decoration.
Christmas memories out of this world
In the days leading up to the holidays, Morgan and his team played Christmas music throughout the resort and played classic holiday movies to create a festive atmosphere. They also used a projector with a recording of a burning log to make it look like they had a cozy fireplace on the station, he said.
Considering the international nature of their crew, they actually celebrated Christmas twice: Christmas on December 25 and Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7.
If your idea of planning ahead is to buy Christmas gifts on Black Friday, it’s a lot different for astronauts thinking about their space mission if it includes a vacation.
“We had to think a year or more in advance to make sure we were buying, wrapping and keeping these gifts a secret all the time,” Morgan said.
Morgan knew Parmitano enjoyed a special Russian treat called Chocolate Cheese, which is essentially a thick chocolate fondant, so Morgan saved a few to include with Parmitano’s gift. Morgan also gave each teammate a harmonica in their bottom so they could have a harmonica band on board.
Morgan was missed by his family and thought about the traditions he would normally share with them. One of her favorites is spending Christmas Eve lit by candlelight alone. He grew up with this tradition and continues it with his family.
When he woke up on Christmas morning in the space station, all the lights were turned off in the modules, which is normal while the astronauts are sleeping.
But Koch had taken small flashlights and covered them with gold tape to make them look like small lighted candles. They were everywhere – in the lab, the crew quarters, the kitchen where the crew eats.
“When I saw that, I actually choked on nostalgia,” Morgan said. “It made me think of the fact that my family was missed at Christmas, but also of the kindness of Christina’s gesture. She had paid attention to this little detail and it was extremely significant. This is one of the many memories I hold dear from my time on the space station. . “
Many good years
The space station operates on Greenwich Mean Time to meet a schedule. The crew witness 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day as they circle the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.
So when the time comes to say “Happy New Year”, the crew has plenty of opportunities to celebrate. They call every mission check when the New Year arrives in their time zone.
New Years is a much bigger celebration than Christmas for the Russian crew, so the entire crew has come together to enjoy a big meal and toast for the coming year.
But the other big tradition is watching a Russian movie, which when translated essentially means “irony of fate”. The 1976 Soviet romantic comedy television film has “a little bit of a weird plot about a man who gets so drunk he ends up in Leningrad and doesn’t know how he got there,” Morgan said.
It is a cultural phenomenon to watch the film on New Years Eve in Russia, so it is played in the Russian segment to honor the tradition.
“To experience this with our Russian teammates was very special,” said Morgan. “This exchange of these traditions and the experience of each other’s holidays and sharing between them through an international team, this will be what I will take away from this experience. It embodies all that is good in international cooperation and the sharing traditions in different countries. “
Celebrate in isolation
While astronauts normally have the ability to email, videoconference, and make phone calls, they have a bit more time to do so so they can communicate with their families while on vacation.
In 2020, it’s also how families and friends connect by distancing themselves to stay safe.
“While it’s not perfect, we still have a lot to be thankful for,” Morgan said. “We have the technology available to be a part of each other’s vacation experiences, even though we are far removed, whether across states, oceans, or low Earth orbit.
This is his first Thanksgiving home since 2018. While they typically welcome astronauts and cosmonauts to visiting Houston for training, they cannot do so this year.
Morgan said the key to enjoying this holiday season is similar to how astronauts celebrate in space: with planning, intention and thoughtfulness.
Connect with people you haven’t contacted in a while, be purposefully thoughtful, and do small things that make a big impact, Morgan said.
Before going to space, he gathered photos of his friends and family. In space, he took them to the Cupola, where Earth is visible from the space station, and took photos of those closest to them with Earth as a backdrop. It was a simple thing, although it took a little planning, but brought joy to those close to him.
Morgan also shared his wish for the current space station crew as well as everyone on Earth.
“While they are living the vacations apart from their loved ones, the majority of people on this planet are now,” Morgan said. “But this separation is over. The crew will come back and be reunited, this pandemic will pass and we will all be reunited as human beings.”
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