Christmas on the International Space Station
Christmas on the International Space Station covers the celebration of Christmas on the International Space Station. Christmas is a seasonal Christian celebration in remembarance to the birth of Jesus, and is celebrated each year by the International Space Station 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 celebrates Christmas according to the Julian calendar, whilst the Catholic Church and the various Protestant denominations use the Gregorian calendar so the crew may celebrate Christmas more than once on the station choosing between December 25 or January 6, 7 or 19.
Expedition One arrived on the ISS on 2 November 2000, celebrating their first Christmas on board the station later that year.[2] Other celebrations included Expedition 30, with the arrival of Donald Pettit, Oleg Kononenko, and André Kuipers.[3][4]
On 24 December 2013, astronauts made a rare Christmas Eve extravehicular activity, 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.[5]
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