Stranded NASA astronauts celebrate Christmas on the International Space Station
Stuck in space for almost 200 days, these astronauts won’t make it home for the festive season.
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Two NASA astronauts stuck in space will celebrate Christmas on the International Space Station (ISS), marking six months since the pair were due to return home.
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore were launched into space on June 5, 2024 for what was meant to be an eight-day mission on a test flight of the Boeing-made Starliner.
However, their stay was extended after the spacecraft was fraught with technical problems including helium leaks and thruster failures on the journey to the space station.
Christmas, thanksgiving and voting in space
Christmas in space is considered an “annual, if not entirely routine” experience by NASA and their astronauts given the frequency of space missions.
However, there is no confirmation on how Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore will mark the festive season. Though, for Ms Williams’ this won’t be her first time – she was part of a crew that celebrated Christmas in space in 2006.
Though they’ve been stuck in space for months, Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore have still had the chance to participate in normal, Earthling activities.
They celebrated Thanksgiving earlier this year, getting the day off work and feasting on dehydrated pouches of “smoked turkey, some cranberry, apple cobbler, green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes,” NBC reported.
The pair also cast their votes via electronic vote in the 2024 US election on November 5.
Official NASA Astronauts account posted a photo of the stranded astronauts and their crew wearing festive blue, white and red socks. The caption read: “It doesn’t matter if you are sitting, standing or floating – what matters is that you vote!”
Like other Americans away from home, astronauts filled out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot.
Their encrypted vote was then sent through satellites to Mission Control and passed on to the relevant county clerk, according to NASA.
Not unusual
Wilmore and Williams aren’t first astronauts to celebrate Christmas in space.
Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were the first crew to do so when they orbited the moon in 1968.
The trio celebrated the holidays by reading the opening verses from the Bible’s Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve broadcastwatched one billion people across 64 countries.
“We were told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice,” Borman recalledin a 2008 interview. “And the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate.”
“The first ten verses of Genesis is the foundation of many of the world’s religions, not just the Christian religion,” saidLovell.
“There are more people in other religions than the Christian religion around the world, and so this would be appropriate tothat and so that’s how it came to pass.”
On Christmas morning, Lovell radioed back to Earth and confirmed the plan to leave lunar orbit worked, delivering the nowhistoric line: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus!”
Why are Williams and Wilmore still in space?
In September, it was determined too risky for the two astronauts to crew the spaceship home and the capsule was sent back without Retired navy Captain Williams and navy test pilot Wilmore. It landed on Earth, empty.
The move freed up one of the two docking spots reserved for American capsules on the ISS, as the ship in the other spot could not accommodate the pair for a flight home due to a lack of space.
NASA said there was “tension” during meetings with Boeing executives about how to bring the stranded astronauts back home. Boeing had publicly insisted it was confident in its spaceship, but the American federal agency still ended up booking the astronauts a SpaceX flight home.
Williams and Wilmore will return to Earth on Space X’s Dragon capsule in March 2025.
What happens to your body in space?
Like other astronauts, Wilmore and Williams will face a number of health risks during their eight month stay in space.
“An extended period in space can be quite challenging and quite taxing on your body,” the University of Melbourne’s spacehealth topic co-ordinator Dr Rowena Christiansen previously told news.com.au.
One of the biggest risks astronauts face is the weakening of their muscles and bones.
“Because the muscles don’t have to work as hard to support the body, they can become weaker and get smaller,” Dr Rowena explained,adding that muscles in your heart, legs and neck can be affected.
“Alongside that, because your bones aren’t having to work against gravity, your bones lose minerals in microgravity, particularlycalcium, and that can lead to a decrease in bone density.”
She warned changes to muscle mass can occur “pretty quickly”.
In fact, muscle mass can fall by as much as 20 per cent after two weeks in space and by 30 per cent for longer missions ofthree to six months, Dr Christiansen said.
Astronauts can also lose one to two per cent of their bone mass every month they spend in space and up to 10 per cent overa six-month period.
‘Puffy face and chicken legs syndrome’
Dr Christiansen said gravity has a significant effect on the distribution of fluids in your body, leading astronauts who spendtime in microgravity to develop what is known as “puffy face and chicken legs syndrome”.
“If you take away the effects of gravity then you tend to get less fluid in the bottom half of your body, and fluid tendsto shift to the top half of your body, so you tend to get a more puffy face, and that can give you things like nasal congestionand potentially affect your sense of smell,” she said.
Astronauts may also experience changes to their eyes and vision known as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS) – a syndrome unique to humans who fly in space.
“It is thought that some of these fluid shifts – because they’re contributing to increased pressure in the skull – can leadto changes like a flattening of the shape of the eyeball and the swelling of the optic nerve, so that can lead to astronautshaving changes in their visual acuity, which is how your ability to focus on scenes,” Dr Christiansen said.
“So they might need to use reading glasses while they’re up in space, as opposed to not needing them here on Earth. So theyalways keep a supply of reading glasses at the international station.”
Radiation
Having travelled beyond the Earth’s orbit, astronauts are at risk of being exposed to radiation, which can lead to an increasedrisk of cancer and other degenerative diseases.
But Dr Christiansen said Wilmore and Williams – who are positioned 400km from Earth on the ISS – are still nestled withinthe Earth’s highly protective magnetic field.
“They do experience slightly increased level of radiation compared to being on Earth but it is still a lot les than you wouldexperience if you are out in deep space.”
While in space, astronauts wear dosimeters, which measure the cumulative radiation dose they receive during the course oftheir mission.
Overall, Dr Christiansen said NASA has developed a wide range of strategies to support astronauts’ physical and psychologicalhealth, which has helped many of the health risks being largely reversible when they return home.
“The general consensus seems to be that we’re now at a point where we’ve learnt a lot from the last 60 or so years of humansliving and working in space, so these risks are pretty well understood, and there are now a lot of strategies that have beendeveloped to deal with it.”
“With Sunny and Butch, because they’re both very experienced astronauts, they know what they have to do …. So their previousexperience is an enormous asset for them to be able to have insights and resilience to manage (the risks) and manage it well.”
Originally published as Stranded NASA astronauts celebrate Christmas on the International Space Station
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