Thanksgiving Celebration in Space – NASA

The Thanksgiving holiday typically brings families and friends together in a celebration of shared gratitude for all the good things that happened during the previous year. People celebrate the holiday in different ways, with parades, football marathons and attending church services, but food remains the overriding theme. For astronauts embarked on long-duration space missions, separation from family and friends is inevitable, and they depend on other crew members to share the tradition and enjoy the culinary traditions as much as possible.

Over the past several decades, astronauts have celebrated the holiday during their time in space in a number of unique ways. Enjoy stories and photographs from orbital Thanksgiving celebrations over the years.

Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson and William R. Pogue hold the distinction of being the first crew to celebrate Thanksgiving in space on November 22, 1973. That day, their seventh of an 84-day mission, Gibson and Pogue completed a 6-hour, 33-minute spacewalk while Carr remained in the Multiple Docking Adapter, without access to food. All three made up for the lack of lunch by consuming two meals at noon, although none included special items for Thanksgiving.

Twelve years passed before the next Thanksgiving celebration in orbit. On November 28, 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 the payload specialists Charles D. Walker of the United States and Rodolfo Neri Vela of Mexico feasted on shrimp cocktail, irradiated turkey and cranberry sauce aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

Neri Vela introduced tortillas to space menus, and they’ve been a favorite among astronauts ever since. Unlike regular bread, tortillas do not create crumbs, a potential hazard of weightlessness, and have multiple uses for any meal of the day. The crew of STS-33, NASA astronauts Frederick D. Gregory, John E. Blaha, Manley L. “Sonny” Carter, F. Story Musgrave, and Kathryn C. Thornton, celebrated Thanksgiving aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1989. Gregory and Musgrave celebrated their second Thanksgiving in space two years later, along with another STS-44 NASA astronauts Terrence T. “Tom” Henricks, James S. Voss, Mario Runco and Thomas J. Hennen aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

In 1996, Blaha celebrated his second Thanksgiving in space with Russian cosmonauts Valeri G. Korzun and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri aboard the Mir space station. Blaha watched the beautiful Earth through the Mir windows instead of his usual football fare. The STS-80 crew of NASA astronauts Kenneth D. Cockrell, Kent V. Rominger, Tamara E. Jernigan, Thomas D. Jones and Musgrave, now on its third turkey day in orbit, celebrated Thanksgiving aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Although the eight crew members worked in different spacecraft in different orbits, they exchanged holiday greetings via space-to-space radio. This marked the largest number of people in the room on Thanksgiving Day up to that time.

A year later, NASA astronaut David A. Wolf celebrated Thanksgiving with his Russian crewmates Anatoli Y. Solovev, who translated the holiday into Russian as the blagodarenia, and Pavel V. Vinogradov aboard Mir. They enjoyed smoked turkey, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, peas and milk. Also in orbit at the time were the crew of STS-87, NASA astronauts Kevin R. Kregel, Steven W. Lindsey, Kalpana Chawla and Winston E. Scott, Takao Doi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Leonid K. Kadenyuk of Ukraine, aboard at Columbia. The nine crew members aboard the two spacecraft broke the year-old record for the largest number of people in space at one time for Thanksgiving, and also set the record for the most nations represented, four.

The Expedition 1 crew of NASA astronauts William M. Shepherd and Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos celebrated the first Thanksgiving aboard the International Space Station on November 23, 2000, three weeks after their arrival aboard the facility. The crew took time out of their busy schedule to enjoy ham and smoked turkey and send thanks to people on the ground who provided excellent support for their flight. Crews have celebrated Thanksgiving in space every November since then.

In 2001, Expedition 3 crew members NASA astronaut Frank L. Culbertson, and Vladimir N. Dezhurov and Mikhail V. Tyurin of Roscosmos enjoyed the first real Thanksgiving aboard the space station, complete with a cardboard turkey as decoration. The following year’s orbital Thanksgiving celebration included the largest number of people at the time, bringing together 10 crew members from Expedition 5, STS-113 and Expedition 6. 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. Blueberry-cherry cobbler rounded off the meal.

Expedition 18 crew members NASA astronauts E. Michael Fincke and Gregory E. Chamitoff and Yuri V. Lonchakov, representing Roscosmos, welcomed the STS-126 crew of NASA astronauts Christopher J. Ferguson, Eric A. Boe, Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper, Donald R. Pettit, Stephen G. Bowen, R. Shane Kimbrough, and Sandra H. Magnus during Thanksgiving in 2008. They dined in space shuttle Endeavour’s center deck on smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans and mushrooms, cornbread dressing and a cranapple dessert.

The following year, the largest and most internationally diverse group celebrated Thanksgiving in space. The six Expedition 21 crew members, NASA astronauts Jeffrey N. Williams and Nicole P. Stott, Roman Y. Romanenko and Maksim V. Suraev of Roscosmos, Frank L. DeWinne of the European Space Agency and Robert B. Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency were host to the six members of the STS-129 crew, NASA astronauts Charles O. Hobaugh, Barry E. Wilmore, Michael J. Foreman, Robert L. Satcher, Randolph J. Bresnik and Leland D. Melvin. The twelve assembled crew members represented the United States, Russia, Belgium and Canada. The celebration took place two days early, since the shuttle unloaded from the space station on Thanksgiving Day.

We hope you enjoyed these stories and photographs from Thanksgivings celebrated in space. We would like to wish everyone here on earth and the seven-man crew of Expedition 72 aboard the space station a very happy Thanksgiving! For NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” E. Wilmore and Donald R. Pettit, this will mark their third time celebrating the holiday in space.