Expedition 30 crew with Santa Claus hats

ISS-34 Christmas holiday in the Unity node

Christmas on the International Space Station covers the celebration of

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

. Christmas is celebrated each year by the

crew, their families, and ground-staff. Crew are given time off duty according to their respective culture, religion/faith and ethnicity. The

Russian Orthodox Church , native_name_lang = ru , image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia , abbreviation = ROC , type ...

celebrates Christmas according to the

Julian calendar The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandr ...

, whilst the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and the various

Protestant denominations This is a list of the largest Protestant denominations. It aims to include sizable Protestant communions, federations, alliances, councils, fellowships, and other denominational organisations in the world and provides information regarding the me ...

use the

Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years dif ...

so the crew may celebrate Christmas more than once on the station choosing between 25 December or 6, 7 or 19 January.

Expedition 1 Expedition 1 was the first long-duration stay on the International Space Station (ISS). The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days, from November 2000 to March 2001. It was the beginning of an uninterrupted human presence on the ...

arrived on the ISS on 2 November 2000, celebrating their first Christmas on board the station later that year. Other celebrations included

Expedition 30 Expedition 30 was the 30th long-duration mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The expedition's first three crew members – Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin – arrived on the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-22 on 16 ...

, with the arrival of

Donald Pettit Donald Roy Pettit (born April 20, 1955) is an American astronaut and chemical engineer. He is a veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station, one Space Shuttle mission and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in ...

Oleg Kononenko Oleg Dmitriyevich Kononenko (russian: Олег Дмитриевич Кононенко; ; born 21 June 1964 in Turkmenistan) is a Russian cosmonaut from the Turkmen SSR. He has flown to the International Space Station four times, as a flight eng ...

, and

André Kuipers André Kuipers (; born 5 October 1958) is a Dutch physician and ESA astronaut. He became the second Dutch citizen, third Dutch-born and fifth Dutch-speaking astronaut upon launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004. Kuipers returned to Earth abo ...

. The station has been continuously occupied since 2000, so every Christmas has been experienced by a crew. The holiday is popular enough that one of the traditions that has developed is having a Christmas dinner. On 25 December 2011 the crew of

took a break on Christmas to a take crew photo. This included Dan Burbank, Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit, Anatoly Ivanishin, Andre Kuipers, and Anton Shkaplerov. On 24 December 2013, astronauts made a rare Christmas Eve

extravehicular activity Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft. In the absence of a breathable Earthlike atmosphere, the astronaut is completely reliant on a space suit for environmental support. EVA in ...

, installing a new ammonia pump for the station's cooling system. The faulty cooling system had failed earlier in the month, halting many of the station's science experiments. Astronauts had to brave a "mini blizzard" of noxious ammonia while installing the new pump. It was only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk in NASA history. On 25 December 2016 the crew celebrated Christmas by floating in micro-gravity and opening Christmas presents recently delivered on a Japanese cargo spacecraft. One astronaut wore a Santa hat in orbit. The French astronaut

Thomas Pesquet Thomas Gautier Pesquet (; born 27 February 1978 in Rouen) is a French aerospace engineer, pilot, and European Space Agency astronaut. Pesquet was selected by ESA as a candidate in May 2009, and he successfully completed his basic training in Nove ...

shared special French food with station crew. Pesquet also made a Christmas-time special video for the ESA.

References

External links

DLR - Christmas in space
{{inspace

International Space Station