CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Turkey and football were the main Thanksgiving headliners up on the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, the station’s commander, served as Thanksgiving chef for the six-person crew. He showed off the specialties he prepared in a video this week.
“It’s going to be a little bit different for us up here in space,” he said, “but I’m going to try to make it as much like home as we can.”
On Thursday, Nov. 24 — a regular workday for the crew — Kimbrough warmed up pouches of sliced smoked turkey, candied yams, and cherry and blueberry cobbler. He also add water to the bags of freeze-dried cornbread dressing, green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.
“You can’t have a Thanksgiving meal without green beans,” he noted.
Mission Control promised to beam up some live football games — “to complete the experience,” Kimbrough said.
It was the second Thanksgiving in space for Kimbrough, who’s one month into a four-month mission, and the third for American Peggy Whitson, who arrived at the orbiting lab on Saturday, Nov. 19, for a six-month stay. One Frenchman and three Russians round off the crew.
Kimbrough said he and the others would share what they’re thankful for this Thanksgiving. No 1 on the list, he said, is being safe in space.
NASA, meanwhile, shared its recipe for “out of this world” cornbread dressing.
It’s straight from Johnson Space Center’s food lab, “no freeze-drying required.”