While Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the U.S. and Canada commemorating the goodwill between European settlers and native peoples in the New World, American astronauts aboard the International Space Station are sharing this year’s celebration with their fellow crewmembers from France and Russia.
After an otherwise normal work day involving scientific studies and the live reading of a children’s book by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, the space station’s six-person crew will gather in the Zvezda service module for a meal including turkey, green beans, yams, and mashed potatoes.
“We’re going to work all day, and then we’re going to have an evening big dinner full of most of the things you’re going to have at your table,” said Shane Kimbrough, a retired Army officer and the current commander of the ISS.
In their zero-gravity environment, everything the astronauts consume comes from prepackaged pouches, as reported in an article by Space.com. Food is often freeze-dried or dehydrated, so it needs water added before it can be eaten.
Kimbrough, from Atlanta, is accompanied by another American, Peggy Whitson. On Thanksgiving she will help Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov conduct tests to determine the effects of spaceflight on eyesight, while Kimbrough installs a centrifuge, Space.com learned from a NASA spokesman.
Besides Ryzhikov, the two other cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Oleg Novitskiy are tasked with unloading a shipment that arrived in a Russian spacecraft on Nov. 19.
NASA astronauts previously had the day off on Thanksgiving, which is a federal holiday. The current crew on board the ISS is part of the 50th expedition to the station, which was launched in 1998.
Featured image: The International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour orbit Earth during the shuttle’s final sortie on May 23, 2011 in space. Credit: Paolo Nespoli – ESA/NASA via Getty Images
