Holidays in the space station

By Abraham Dale

It is currently the season of giving and being cold here on Earth. Have any of you looked at the stars and thought “I wonder what the astronauts do for the holidays?” Well I am here today to give you the answer. For today I will be taking quotes from NASA, the first one will be one from Dec 24 2024. “Crew members aboard the International Space Station celebrate the holiday season in a unique way while living and working at the orbiting laboratory. Each crew member, including the current Expedition 72, spends time enjoying the view of Earth from the space station, privately communicating with their friends and families, and sharing a joint meal with their expedition crewmates, while continuing experiments and station maintenance.” So as we can see they are having a jolly Christmas Eve in their spacecraft.

Another quote from NASA. “After NASA launched the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope into Earth’s orbit in 1990, NASA sent a space shuttle crew on a mission, STS-61, to service the telescope. In 1993, NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman celebrated Hanukkah after completing the third spacewalk of the servicing mission. Hoffman celebrated with a traveling menorah and dreidel.” It does seem quite merry for the astronautsaustronauts on the space station but there are two more quotes to look at. “In November 2000, the arrival of Expedition 1 crew members, NASA astronaut William Shepherd and Roscosmos cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, aboard the International Space Station, marked the beginning of a continuous presence in space. As the first crew to celebrate the holiday season at the laboratorial outpost, they began the tradition of reading a goodwill message to those back on Earth. Shepherd honored a naval tradition of writing a poem as the first entry of the new year in the ship’s log.” And another quote from NASA 

“For more than 24 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the International Space Station, through which astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. As NASA supports missions to and from the station, crew members have continued to celebrate the holidays in space.” So as we can see astronauts spend their times floating and dressing up for the holidays, I hope you have found this article helpful. Happy holidays!