Astronauts on ISS set for lavish Thanksgiving feast as SpaceX cargo brings comfort food to orbit

Americans are set to celebrate Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, but the celebrations won’t be restricted to the terrestrial realm. Those stationed aboard the International Space Station will also be joining the festivities in their own unique way.

Thanksgiving in space

This won’t be the first time that a space crew will partake in Thanksgiving Day’s traditional indulgences. According to Florida Today, the first time astronauts celebrated this quintessentially American festival was in 1973, when the crew of Skylab 4 tried to mark the day in their own restricted environment.

However, as the publication points out, in those days, the Thanksgiving feast available in space was a rather off-putting “turkey salad that resembled salmon-colored glue poured into a chrome cat-food-like can”.

But this time, the feast laid out on the much more advanced and comfortable ISS would be a genuine feast. It would include clams, oysters, crab meat, quail, smoked salmon, and other sides.

“Good old comfort food. And this is what I think Thanksgiving represents in space,” Mark Marquette, director of the American Space Museum in Titusville, said, as quoted by Florida Today. “I think the comfort-food aspect of it is a real benefit to your psychological world of living in outer space,” he added.

The elaborate Thanksgiving meal for the astronauts was launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 14 September. The astronauts aboard cannot wait to enjoy the delicious fare.

Three more astronauts to reach ISS

On Thursday, 27 November, at 4:27 AM EST, three astronauts will begin their journey to the International Space Station in a Roscosmos Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, which will take off at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA’s Chris Williams will be joined by Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev aboard the spacecraft. They will join Expedition 73’s crew at the ISS to continue scientific research, NASA’s website informed.

The spacecraft will undertake a two-orbit, three-hour journey and dock at the ISS’s Rassvet module at 7:38 AM EST. The launch will be covered live on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube.

FAQs

When is Thanksgiving 2025?

Thanksgiving will be celebrated this year on Thursday, 27 November.

What is the ISS?

The International Space Station is a man-made satellite orbiting Earth where astronauts are stationed.