Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will celebrate Thanksgiving with a special meal in orbit, continuing a tradition which began in 1973 when Skylab 4 astronauts enjoyed double dinners after 6.5-hour spacewalk.

NASA Expedition 73 astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Jonny Kim, along with JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui shared a Thanksgiving message on YouTube reflecting on the holiday and giving viewers a look at the festive foods they’ll be enjoying in orbit.

This year’s menu features plenty of familiar comfort foods like turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Cardman expressed appreciation for NASA’s Space Food Systems Lab in Houston, which prepared a few special treats for the crew, including crab, salmon, and even some lobster.

Preparing food for space

If you prepare some of your Thanksgiving dishes a few days in advance, you are already cooking the NASA way. Every holiday meal in space is prepared months before Thanksgiving Day and long before the launch of the cargo missions that deliver food and other supplies to the station.

This week’s feast arrived on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft launched on September 14, along with about 11,000 pounds of additional cargo.

All food served aboard the ISS must have a minimum shelf life of one year. Future planetary missions will require a minimum shelf life of five years.

Many foods used for both the Shuttle program and the ISS are freeze dried and packaged in vacuum sealed bags or cups. When it is time to eat, astronauts attach the pouch to the station’s water reclamation system, which injects a precise amount of hot water to rehydrate the meal.

The packaging is designed to be easily crushed so that trash can be compacted more efficiently.

What about the Tang?

Yes, Tang is really something astronauts drink in space. 

Tang was originally created by General Foods for the U.S. military as a shelf-stable source of vitamins A and C. It first flew on Mercury missions in the 1960s and continued to appear in the programs that followed, including Gemini and Apollo. It even showed up from time to time on Shuttle flights and still makes occasional appearances on the International Space Station.

Its strong flavor helps mask the slightly metallic taste of the recycled water used on every space mission. Tang is not universally loved by astronauts, despite what 1960s advertising claimed.  In 2013, Buzz Aldrin proclaimed “Tang sucks” while presenting at an awards show.

Astronauts have to add a few chairs at the table too

Cardman, Fincke, Kim, and Yui arrived at the station aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in August, along with cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They joined NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, who had traveled to the station on a Soyuz spacecraft in April.

The station’s population will rise to 13 on Thanksgiving with the arrival of NASA astronaut Christopher Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev aboard Soyuz MS-28.

NASA provided live coverage of the launch on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube, with coverage beginning at 3:30 a.m. ET.  Launch is scheduled for 4:27 a.m. ET.  Docking is scheduled for shortly at 10 a.m. 

Just in time for lunch.