Commemorating the Holiday Season in Space

The Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year vacations are happy occasions generally invested with friends and family. Astronauts and cosmonauts who discover themselves in area throughout the vacations have actually discovered their own special method to commemorate the celebrations. In the early years of the area program, vacations invested in area happened rarely, most especially the flight of Apollo 8 around the Moon throughout Christmas 1968, making them more unforgettable. As objectives ended up being longer and more regular, vacations in area ended up being more typical celebrations. For the previous 23 years, vacations invested aboard the International Space Station have actually ended up being yearly, if not completely regular, occasions.

Left: The popular Earthrise picture, taken by the Apollo 8 team in lunar orbit. : Video of the Apollo 8 team of Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders checking out from The Book of Genesis.

As the very first team to invest Christmas in area, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders, commemorated the vacation while circling around the Moon in December 1968, the very first people to leave Earth orbit. They commemorated the occasion on Christmas Eve by taking turns checking out the opening verses from the Bible’s Book of Genesis as they relay scenes of the Moon sliding by listed below. An approximated one billion individuals in 64 nations tuned in to their Christmas Eve broadcast. As they left lunar orbit, Lovell radioed back to Earth, where Christmas Eve had actually currently turned to Christmas Day, “Please be notified there is a Santa Claus!”

Left: Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, left, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue cut their homemade Christmas tree in December 1973. : Carr, Gibson, and Pogue hung their stockings aboard Skylab.

Throughout their 84-day record-setting objective aboard the Skylab spaceport station in 1973 and 1974, Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue, and Edward G. Gibson commemorated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in area– the very first team to invest Thanksgiving and New Year’s in orbit. They developed a homemade Christmas tree from remaining food containers, utilized colored decals as designs, and topped it with a cardboard cutout in the shape of a comet. Carr and Pogue invested 7 hours on a Christmas Day spacewalk to alter out movie containers and observe the passing Comet Kohoutek. As soon as back inside the station, they took pleasure in a Christmas supper total with fruitcake, spoke to their households, and opened presents. They even had orbital visitors of sorts, as Soviet cosmonauts Pyotr I. Klimuk and Valentin V. Lebedev orbited the world aboard Soyuz 13 in between Dec. 18 and 26, marking the very first time that astronauts and cosmonauts remained in area at the exact same time. Various orbits prevented any direct contact in between the 2 teams.

Aboard Salyut-6, Georgi M. Grechko, left, and Yuri V. Romanenko, toast to commemorate the brand-new year in area, the very first Russian cosmonauts to do so. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

In the more nonreligious Soviet age, the New Year’s vacation had more significance than the Jan. 7 observance of Orthodox Christmas. The very first cosmonauts to sound in a brand-new year in orbit were Yuri V. Romanenko and Georgi M. Grechko, throughout their record-setting 96-day objective in 1977 and 1978, aboard the Salyut-6 spaceport station. They toasted the brand-new year throughout a television broadcast with the ground. The precise nature of the drink taken in for the event has actually not been given to posterity.

Left: STS-61 objective expert Jeffrey A. Hoffman with a dreidel throughout Hanukkah in December 1993. : Video of Hoffman explaining how he commemorated Hanukkah aboard area shuttle bus Endeavour.

The eight-day Jewish vacation of Hanukkah, likewise referred to as the Festival of Lights, commemorates the regain of Jerusalem and rededication of the Second Temple in 164 B.C.E. It takes place in the month of Kislev in the Hebrew lunar calendar, which can fall in between late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. NASA astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman commemorated the very first Hanukkah in area throughout the STS-61 Hubble Space Telescope Servicing objective in 1993. Hanukkah that year started on the night of Dec. 9, after Hoffman finished his 3rd spacewalk of the objective. He commemorated with a taking a trip menorah, unlit obviously, and by spinning a dreidel.

The STS-103 team flaunt their Santa hats on the flight deck of area shuttle bus Discovery in 1999.

The team of another Hubble Space Telescope repair work objective, STS-103, commemorated the very first area shuttle bus Christmas in 1999 aboard Discovery. For Christmas supper, Curtis L. Brown, Scott J. Kelly, Steven L. Smith, Jean-François A. Clervoy of the European Space Agency (ESA), John M. Grunsfeld, C. Michael Foale, and Claude Nicollier of ESA delighted in duck foie gras on Mexican tortillas, cassoulet, and salted pork with lentils. Smith and Grunsfeld finished repair work on the telescope throughout a Christmas Eve spacewalk.

Left: Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mir Expedition 17 flight engineer Elena V. Kondakova with a bottle of champagne to commemorate New Year’s Eve 1994. : Video of Kondakova showing the habits of champagne in weightlessness aboard Mir. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

In between 1987 and 1998, 12 Mir exploration teams invested their vacations aboard the ever-expanding orbital station. 2 of the teams consisted of NASA astronauts, John E. Blaha and David A. Wolf, aboard the Russian spaceport station as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program.

Left: Video of Mir Expedition 22 flight engineer and NASA astronaut John E. Blaha’s 1996 Christmas message from Mir. : Mir Expedition 24 flight engineer and NASA astronaut David A. Wolf with his menorah and dreidel to commemorate Hanukkah in 1997.

The last 2 New Year’s Eve messages from Mir. Left: Mir 24 team of Pavel V. Vinogradov, left, NASA astronaut David A. Wolf, and Anatoli Y. Solovyev in 1997. : Mir 26 team of Sergei V. Avdeyev, left, and Gennadi I. Padalka in 1998. It was the 3rd time Avdeyev called in the brand-new year in area. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos.

The arrival of Expedition 1 team members William M. Shepherd of NASA and Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos aboard the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2000, marked the start of a long-term human existence in area. The very first to commemorate Christmas and ring in the brand-new year aboard the new orbiting lab, they started a custom of checking out a goodwill message to individuals back in the world. Shepherd honored a marine custom of composing a poem as the very first entry of the brand-new year in the ship’s log.

Left: Video of Expedition 1 team members Yuri P. Gidzenko of Roscosmos, left, NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd, and Ser