Thanksgiving in Houston usually means traffic on I-45 and a crowded kitchen. This year it also meant a floating feast 250 miles up, where NASA astronauts and visiting crewmates on the International Space Station dug into packaged turkey, mashed potatoes, seafood, and, stealing the spotlight, a can of cranberry sauce sent up by the Russian space agency. Veteran astronaut Mike Fincke, spending his second Thanksgiving in orbit, held the cranberry packet up to the camera as crewmates drifted through the Destiny module. The orbital holiday spread rode up on recent cargo deliveries and landed on the table just hours after a Soyuz crew launched and docked with the outpost.
According to Houston Public Media, Fincke showed viewers the Russian cranberry sauce and reminded them, “This is my second Thanksgiving in space.” Astronaut Zena Cardman walked audiences through NASA’s specially prepared “Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag,” or BOB, packed by the agency’s food lab with clams, oysters, crab meat, quail, and smoked salmon alongside the traditional turkey and mashed potatoes. Cardman noted that every item is packaged with microgravity in mind to prevent crumbs and runaway gravy, and she gave a shout-out to the ground teams who assembled the unusual space-age holiday bag.
Soyuz Crew Arrives On The Holiday
NASA says Soyuz MS‑28 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:27 a.m. Eastern and arrived at the station on Thursday, delivering NASA astronaut Chris Williams along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev to the orbiting complex. The new trio joined Expedition 73 crewmembers Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, and Jonny Kim, briefly swelling the station’s population just as the Thanksgiving meal was coming together. NASA’s release also lays out the newcomers’ to-do list for the next roughly eight months, from science investigations to the less glamorous station maintenance that keeps the orbital lab running, according to NASA.
How You Eat A Holiday In Microgravity
On the ISS, nearly everything on the menu is engineered to stay put, not float away. Most dishes are thermostabilized, freeze-dried, or vacuum-packed so that astronauts can add water, warm them up, and eat with the help of Velcro, tethers, and careful technique. Space.com reported that the crew’s Thanksgiving plan included turkey, mashed potatoes, and even lobster, and that Fincke and Cardman highlighted the menu in a NASA video released ahead of the holiday. That mix of familiar dehydrated staples and occasional fresh treats ferried up by cargo missions is how planners keep ISS meals safe, nutritious, and, on days like this, just a little festive.
A Tiny Ritual Of International Cooperation
Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui noted that Thanksgiving is not a holiday back home, but the spirit of it still reached orbit. “We don’t have Thanksgiving in Japan, but here, on ISS, everybody respects each other’s culture,” he told reporters, according to Houston Public Media. The shared meal, complete with that Russian cranberry sauce, served as a small but pointed reminder that day-to-day cooperation aboard the station continues even when politics on the ground grow complicated.
NASA carried live coverage of the Soyuz launch, orbital rendezvous, and hatch opening on NASA+ and YouTube and plans to keep streaming key station moments as the new crew settles into its routine, according to NASA. For everyone watching from Earth, the holiday feast in orbit offered a rare, close-up look at how astronauts carve out small rituals of normal life in an extraordinary laboratory circling the planet.
