Winter holidays in space are celebrated on the International Space Station annually by astronauts working in zero gravity, their families and specialists on Earth.
Content
- 1 Dates
- 2 New Year
- 3 Christmas
- 4 Cosmic traditions
- 4.1 Holiday dinner
- 4.2 Jewelry
- 5 notes
- 6 References
- 6.1 Video
Dates
The crew is given the opportunity on duty to celebrate holidays in accordance with their culture, denomination and ethnicity. A favorite winter holiday for Russian cosmonauts is the New Year, and Americans more revere Christmas [2] .
Oriental Christians celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar , and in the Catholic Church and its various branches - according to the Gregorian calendar , which is why the crew can celebrate Christmas on December 25 and January 7.
New Year in orbit can be celebrated 16 times - while the station crosses different time zones. But usually they celebrate 3-4 times, focusing on the earthly time of the astronauts [3] .
New Year
The first in orbit New Year was celebrated by Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Yuri Romanenko in 1978 at the Salyut station [4] .
Russian astronauts observe the tradition of watching the film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” ”, They set the table out of space food and fruits delivered by a space truck, observe a salute from the porthole, flashing with bright lights on the Earth [5] . From a bright illumination a light cap is formed above the planet [4] .
Christmas
Christmas (according to the new style) was first met in orbit (and, near the moon) by the crew of Apollo 8 in 1968. Due to the heavy workload of the crew, the celebration of Christmas was limited to a small religious ceremony: each crew member read a fragment of his book of Genesis in television broadcasts to Earth. Then Bormann congratulated all earthlings on Christmas.
At Mir station , where the crews were in space for the first time, the Soviet crew members celebrated only the New Year, but members of the international Shuttle program had the opportunity to celebrate Christmas if this did not violate the agreed schedule.
The first expedition , which arrived at the international space station in November 2000, first celebrated the winter holidays on board. Then cosmonauts Donald Pettit , Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers met at the ISS-30 in space. Since 2000, astronauts have always been present at the station, which is why many have been able to celebrate Christmas on board the station.
The moment of the celebration was captured in a photograph on December 25, 2011 by the ISS-30 crew: Dan Burbank, Oleg Kononenko, Donald Pettit, Anatoly Ivanishin , Andre Kuipers and Anton Shkaplerov [6] .
On December 24, 2013, the astronauts went into outer space to install a new ammonia pump for the cooling system, which failed a month earlier. When installed, emissions of toxic ammonia resembled a "small blizzard." It was NASA’s second EVA in space during Christmas Eve [7] .
On December 25, 2016, crew members in zero gravity celebrated Christmas by opening gifts delivered by a Japanese space truck [8] .
Cosmic Traditions
Gala Dinner
Because of the popularity of the celebration at the station, there is a tradition - a joint gala dinner [9] without champagne, which in space turns into foam, and without alcohol prohibited at the station [3] . Typically, companies manufacturing products for astronauts make special holiday sets [3] . In international teams, colleagues treat each other with a diet [3] [9] [8] .
Jewelry
Also on board they tie it to something immovable (often on the ceiling) and decorate a small artificial Christmas tree [3] :
Ordinary toys - from plastic and tinsel. The most creative crews use improvised tools for decoration. One astronaut hung tools on the Christmas tree - nuts, screwdrivers, wrenches. It looked avant-garde and beautiful.
- astronaut Alexander Lazutkin
To create a festive mood, the international team wears red Santa Claus caps. The Snow Maiden’s costume is also in orbit [4] .
Notes
- ↑ International Space Station Imagery . NASA Official . spaceflight.nasa.gov. Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ RT in Russian. Space 360: as celebrated New Year's holidays on the ISS (January 10, 2017). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Natalya Granina . Christmas tree on the ceiling. As celebrate the New Year in space , Lenta.Ru (December 31, 2016). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 3 Roscosmos TV Studio. Planetary New Year (December 26, 2014). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ ROSCOSMOS Media Store. New Year at the ISS (January 13, 2016). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ International Space Station Imagery . NASA Official . spaceflight.nasa.gov (12/25/2011). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ AP Astronauts Complete Rare Christmas Eve Spacewalk Neopr . Leaker (December 24, 2013). Date of treatment December 24, 2013. Archived December 26, 2013.
- ↑ 1 2 Christmas in Orbit: Astronauts Make Merry Aboard the Space Station , Space.com . Date of treatment November 12, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 Christmas in space features French cuisine (Eng.) , GeekWire (December 23, 2016). Date of treatment November 12, 2017.