The Thanksgiving holiday typically brings families and friends together to celebrate shared gratitude for all the good things that have happened over the past year. People celebrate the holiday in different ways, with parades, soccer marathons and attending church services, but food remains the overarching theme. For astronauts embarking on long-term space missions, separation from family and friends is inevitable and they rely on their crew members to take part in the tradition and enjoy the culinary traditions as much as possible.

Over the past few decades, astronauts have celebrated the holiday in diverse and unique ways during their time in space. Enjoy the stories and photos from orbital Thanksgiving celebrations through the years.

Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson and William R. Pogue are the first crew members to celebrate Thanksgiving in space on November 22, 1973. On that day, their seventh of an 84-day mission, Gibson and Pogue completed a 6-hour, 33-minute spacewalk while Carr remained in the Multiple Docking Adapter and had no access to food. All three made up for missing lunch by eating two meals for dinner, although neither included special Thanksgiving dishes.

Twelve years passed until the next orbital Thanksgiving celebration. On November 28, 1985, the seven-member crew of STS-61B, NASA astronauts Brewster H. Shaw, Bryan D. O’Connor, Jerry L. Ross, Mary L. Cleave and Sherwood C. “Woody” Spring, and met Payload specialists Charles D. Walker of the United States and Rodolfo Neri Vela of Mexico enjoyed shrimp cocktail, irradiated turkey and cranberry sauce aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

Neri Vela introduced tortillas to the space menu and they have been popular with astronauts ever since. Unlike regular bread, tortillas do not form crumbs, a potential danger in weightlessness, and can be used in a variety of ways for any meal of the day. The STS-33 crew, NASA astronauts Frederick D. Gregory, John E. Blaha, Manley L. “Sonny” Carter, F. Story Musgrave and Kathryn C. Thornton, celebrated Thanksgiving aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1989. Gregory and Musgrave celebrated their second Thanksgiving in space two years later, along with STS-44 NASA astronauts Terrence T. “Tom” Henricks, James S. Voss, Mario Runco and Thomas J. Hennen aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

In 1996, Blaha celebrated his second Thanksgiving in space with Russian cosmonauts Valeri G. Korzun and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri aboard the Mir space station. Blaha looked through the Mir windows at the beautiful earth and not, as usual, at football. The STS-80 crew of NASA astronauts Kenneth D. Cockrell, Kent V. Rominger, Tamara E. Jernigan, Thomas D. Jones and Musgrave, now in orbit for their third turkey holiday, celebrated Thanksgiving aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Although the eight crew members were working in different spacecraft in different orbits, they exchanged holiday greetings via space-to-space radio. This was the largest number of people in space on Thanksgiving Day to date.

A year later, NASA astronaut David A. Wolf celebrated Thanksgiving with his Russian crewmates Anatoli Y. Solovev, who translated the holiday into Russian as the blagodarenia, and Pavel V. Vinogradov on board the Mir. They enjoyed smoked turkey, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, peas and milk. Also present at the time were the crew of STS-87, NASA astronauts Kevin R. Kregel, Steven W. Lindsey, Kalpana Chawla and Winston E. Scott, Takao Doi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Leonid K. Kadenyuk of the NASA in orbit Ukraine, aboard Columbia. The nine crew members aboard the two spacecraft broke the year-old record for the largest number of people in space at the same time on Thanksgiving and also set the record for the most nations represented, four.

The Expedition 1 crew of NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd and Roscosmos’ Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev celebrated their first Thanksgiving aboard the on November 23, 2000, three weeks after their arrival aboard the facility International Space Station. The crew took time out of their busy schedule to enjoy ham and smoked turkey and thank those on the ground who had provided excellent support for their flight. Since then, the crews have celebrated Thanksgiving in space every November.

In 2001, Expedition 3 crew members NASA astronaut Frank L. Culbertson and Vladimir N. Dezhurov and Mikhail V. Tyurin of Roscosmos celebrated the first real Thanksgiving aboard the space station, complete with a cardboard turkey as decoration. The orbital Thanksgiving celebration the following year was attended by as many people as there were then, namely the ten crew members of Expedition 5, STS-113 and Expedition 6. After a busy day that included the first Thanksgiving Day spacewalk from the space station heard, the crews gathered and enjoyed a dinner of smoked turkey, mashed potatoes and green beans with mushrooms. Blueberry cherry cobbler rounded out the meal.

The expedition’s 18 crew members, NASA astronauts E. Michael Fincke and Gregory E. Chamitoff and Yuri V. Lonchakov representing Roscosmos, welcomed the STS-126 crew of NASA astronauts Christopher J. Ferguson, Eric A. Boe, Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper and Donald R. Pettit, Stephen G. Bowen, R. Shane Kimbrough and Sandra H. Magnus during Thanksgiving in 2008. They ate smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans and mushrooms, cornbread dressing and a cranapple dessert in the middle deck of the space shuttle Endeavor.

The following year, the largest and most internationally diverse group celebrated Thanksgiving in space. The six Expedition 21 crew members, NASA astronauts Jeffrey N. Williams and Nicole P. Stott, Roman Y. Romanenko and Maksim V. Suraev of Roscosmos, Frank L. DeWinne of the European Space Agency and Robert B. Thirsk of the Canadian Space Die Agency hosted the six STS-129 crew members, NASA astronauts Charles O. Hobaugh, Barry E. Wilmore, Michael J. Foreman, Robert L. Satcher, Randolph J. Bresnik, and Leland D. Melvin. The twelve assembled crew members represented the United States, Russia, Belgium and Canada. The celebration was held two days early because the shuttle undocked from the space station on Thanksgiving Day.

We hope you enjoyed these stories and photos of Thanksgiving celebrated in space. We wish everyone here on site and the seven-person crew of Expedition 72 aboard the space station a happy Thanksgiving! For NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” E. Wilmore and Donald R. Pettit, this will be the third time they have celebrated the holiday in space.