Irradiated Turkey and Freeze-Dried Potatoes: How ISS Astronauts Celebrate Thanksgiving

Space station crews have celebrated Thanksgiving from orbit every November since 2000. Last year, for example, the Expedition 70 crew chowed down on turkey, duck, quail, seafood, and cranberry sauce—with chocolate, mochi, and even pumpkin spice cappuccinos for dessert.

Skylab 4 crewmembers Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue were the first to celebrate Turkey Day in space—but there was no turkey. The astronauts did, however, eat two meals for dinner after wrapping up a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.

The next Thanksgiving to be celebrated in space did not come until 1985, 12 years later, when the STS-61B crew feasted on irradiated turkey and shrimp cocktail. Astronauts in later years would eat ham, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, peas, green beans with mushrooms, candied yams, blueberry cobbler, macaroni and cheese, and more.

Food is prepared at NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory and typically sealed in plastic packets to extend its shelf life. Astronauts use the space station’s “oven,” which is technically a food warmer, to reheat the packaged food.

As the menu has grown, so too has the number of astronauts partaking in the festivities. In 1996, eight NASA astronauts and Roscosmos cosmonauts across two spacecraft set a record for the largest Thanksgiving gathering in orbit. It didn’t hold for long—nine astronauts celebrated the following year representing four nations, also a record at that time.

In 2000, Expedition 1 astronauts set the precedent for annual ISS celebrations. Thanksgiving 2009 was the largest, with the crew of NASA’s Expedition 21 hosting STS-129 astronauts for a feast. The 12 crewmembers, representing the U.S., Russia, Canada, and Belgium, ate two days early because the STS-129 crew departed on Thanksgiving Day.

This year, seven people will be aboard the ISS for Turkey Day. Among them are Boeing Starliner crew flight test (CFT) astronaut Butch Wilmore, who celebrated from the orbital laboratory in 2014, and Soyuz MS-26 crewmember Don Pettit, who did so in 2008. Joining them are Wilmore’s crewmate Suni Williams, Pettit’s crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, and SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Also in orbit will be taikonauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong, and Wang Haoze, the crew of China's Shenzhou 19 mission to the Tiangong space station.

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