DAILY STAR
Today is Thanksgiving, a time for getting together with family, eating as much pumpkin pie as possible and celebrating all the blessings in the world over the past year.
But how do people celebrate it if they’re not in the world? NASA has released the stories of how its astronauts have celebrated the holiday over the years whilst in space.
The first to celebrate Thanksgiving in the stars was Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue in 1973. They were on their seventh day of an 84-day mission and did a spacewalk so had no access to food. They made up for it however by each eating two dinners, but unfortunately, no famous Thanksgiving food item was eaten — a big shame because pumpkin pie is out of this world.
Twelve years passed before the next orbital Thanksgiving celebration. In 1985 the seven-member crew of STS-61B, NASA astronauts Brewster H. Shaw, Bryan D. O’Connor, Jerry L. Ross, Mary L. Cleave, and Sherwood C. “Woody” Spring, and payload specialists Charles D. Walker from the United States and Rodolfo Neri Vela from Mexico, feasted on shrimp cocktail, irradiated turkey, and cranberry sauce aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. Much better. Although as far as parties go, this one didn’t have much atmosphere.
There were only a few more space Thanksgivings between then and 2000, but since the turn of the millennium, every year, an astronaut has celebrated the holiday in space.
In 2001, Expedition 3 crew members NASA astronaut Frank L. Culbertson, and Vladimir N. Dezhurov and Mikhail V. Tyurin of Roscosmos enjoyed the first Thanksgiving aboard the International Space Station. They decorated the Shuttle with a cardboard cut out of a turkey.
The following year’s orbital Thanksgiving celebration included the largest number of astronauts. After a busy day that included the first Thanksgiving Day spacewalk from the space station, the crews settled down to a dinner of smoked turkey, mashed potatoes, and green beans with mushrooms. They even had ‘space’ for desert — a blueberry-cherry cobbler.
NASA’s stories just goes to show, it doesn’t matter how far away we travel from Earth, we will always keep our home with us.
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN DAILY STAR
