Get ready for launch, it’s time for the latest edition of Gardeners off World!
21.08.2023 - 11:51 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
This week, Gardeners Off World is blasting off to celebrate an off-world Thanksgiving. Let’s rehydrate some turkey!
The third Skylab crew – astronauts Gerald Carr, William Pogue and Edward Gibson – celebrated the first Thanksgiving in space in 1973. They didn’t get the day off, though, and Gibson and Pogue suited up and stepped out of the Skylab for a six-hour and 33-minute spacewalk. (Their punishing schedule later led to the infamous Skylab Mutiny.)
The second thanksgiving in space was a little more relaxed:
“And when we were done [eating] we didn’t go watch a football game on TV. We went to the window and watched the Earth go by at five miles a second. I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate a Thanksgiving unless you’re with your friends and family.”
In 1991, Fred Gregory was one of the first astronauts to eat a second Thanksgiving dinner in space. “Just as on earth,” he says, “our feelings about Thanksgiving in space weren’t determined by the quality or the appearance of the meal—but by the people we shared it with.”
Off-world Thanksgiving then became an international affair. In 1996, the STS-80 crew celebrated Thanksgiving aboard Space Shuttle Columbia, while astronaut John Blaha celebrated the holiday on Mir with cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri. In 1997, it was the turn of astronaut David Wolf to spend the holiday on Mir, as the STS-87 crew orbited the Earth aboard Space Shuttle Columbia.
The first crew to live on the ISS arrived on 2nd November 2000 and stayed for several months. Astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev observed Thanksgiving with a dinner of ham and smoked turkey aboard the Zvezda module. They went on to be the first ISS crew to spend Christmas in orbit,
Get ready for launch, it’s time for the latest edition of Gardeners off World!
This week, Gardeners Off World watched as the latest SpaceX launch (CRS-19) delivered more exciting experiments to the International Space Station (ISS).
This morning, the Boeing Company’s CST-100 Starliner capsule launched on its first mission to the International Space Station. The aim of this uncrewed Orbital Test Flight (OFT) was to demonstrate that the spacecraft is ready to transport NASA astronauts and cargo. An instrumented mannequin named Rosie (named after the WW2 icon Rosie the Riveter, and a nod to the trailblazing women in aerospace and human spaceflight) took the place of a crew.
Welcome interplanetary gardeners! This week’s Gardeners off World starts with a little video Boeing has put together of the inside of the crew cabin on the recent Starliner test flight (the one that took tree seeds into space). You can see Rosie the instrumented mannequin, but the highlight is watching astronaut Snoopy float about as the spacecraft reaches orbit, and then plop back down into his seat during the descent!
Hello! Welcome to Gardeners off World. The big news for space gardeners this week is that NASA has determined that the salads grown in Veggie are safe to eat. And a team of Russian researchers have developed a prototype for an orbital greenhouse. The Orbital Biological Automatic Module includes smart lighting to accelerate plant growth, specialised hydroponics, automated irrigation and harvesting solutions. It could be heading to the International Space Station (ISS) – “Humanity’s home in Low Earth Orbit” – in the next few years.
Hello! Welcome to Gardeners Off World. This week we’ll start with a musical interlude, as violinist Lindsey Stirling recently performed her song, Artemis, on top of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center:
Hello, and welcome to Gardeners Off World, your round-up of interplanetary news and views. NASA’s Christina Koch returned to Earth yesterday, after spending 328 days onboard the International Space Station (ISS) – the longest single spaceflight by a woman. Koch participated in three expeditions – 59, 60 and 61 – during her first spaceflight. ESA’s Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov came home on the same flight.
Hello, and welcome to Gardeners off World! On 15 February, the NG-13 cargo ship blasted off from NASA Wallops on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). It arrived on 18 February, where NASA astronaut Drew Morgan caught it with the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
What did you get for Christmas? Hopefully something good, something seedy and something spacey!
Hello, and welcome to Gardeners Off World, a weekly round-up of news and entertainment for people who rather fancy getting their hands dirty on another planet!
Welcome to Gardeners Off World, my weekly round-up of news for green-fingered space nuts! It’s time to suit up and head out into the solar system
It’s Day 19 of the Great British Blast Off, and crew is finding it hard to adjust to life in the isolation of space. Mission Control is having trouble controlling its Isonauts, many of whom keep popping out of the airlock on “essential business”. Some of the Space Dogs are complaining of exhaustion from all the extra spacewalks.