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This Thanksgiving, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will enjoy a special holiday meal far beyond the traditional turkey salad once used during the Apollo era. Alongside turkey, they will have clams, oysters, crab meat, quail, smoked salmon, and other sides and treats.Mark Marquette, director of the American Space Museum in Titusville, said such meals provide comfort and a sense of home for crew members living in isolation around 250 miles above Earth. “You’re trying to replicate Grandma’s green-bean casserole and delicious stuffing,” he said. “It brings a sense of humanity to people in a way that food, or gastronomy, appeases people,” Marquette said as quoted by Florida Today.The festive foods were sent up to the station in September via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL spacecraft. The cargo included a special Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag with clams, crab, salmon, quail, candies, almond butter and hummus.The current ISS crew includes Nasa astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke alongside Kimiya Yui from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos.
Cardman shared a video from the station showing turkey, mashed potatoes, crab, salmon, and lobster floating in a transparent holiday food bag. “So I think it’s going to be a really, really delicious meal. And I can’t wait to share it with everyone, including our new crewmates who are launching on a Soyuz rocket on Thanksgiving Day. That’s going to be really exciting,” Cardman said.Thanksgiving in spaceThe first Thanksgiving in space was celebrated by Skylab 4 astronauts on 22 November 1973. They had just completed a 6½-hour spacewalk and ate double dinners, but there was no special menu or turkey.For many years, astronauts had a standard Thanksgiving meal with turkey, potatoes, and sometimes peas. Shrimp and cranberry sauce were added later.
