Loads of people who find themselves away from residence or touring removed from their family members can be sending messages at present — however right here’s one message that comes from a really distant outpost. The NASA astronauts presently aboard the Worldwide House Station (ISS), zipping across the Earth in low-Earth orbit roughly 250 miles above the planet’s floor have despatched a Fourth of July message to these down on the bottom:
At the moment on the house station are 9 crew members: six NASA astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts. The six NASA astronauts — Mike Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy C. Dyson, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams — got here collectively to ship this message, which was recorded on June 28.
“The Fourth of July at all times jogs my memory of the freedoms that we proceed to battle for day by day all around the world,” Epps mentioned. “And it additionally jogs my memory of being with my household and mates,and celebrating these freedoms that we nonetheless acknowledge and rejoice day by day.”
“For me, the Fourth of July is only a reminder of the fortitude that it took for our forefathers and their households to not solely have the desire to battle for our freedom, but additionally the braveness to take action,” Dyson mentioned.
Over time, it has turn out to be a convention for ISS astronauts to rejoice holidays like Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, or Christmas with video messages and playful outfits and occasions. Previous years have seen astronauts don crimson, white, and blue outfits or stars and stripes objects. Artful NASA astronaut Karen L. Nyberg even iced an American flag cookie in house in 2013.
For a few of the astronauts presently on the ISS, like Barratt and Dyson, that is their second July 4th spent on the station. Additionally it is the most important variety of Individuals who’re celebrating the day on the ISS since 2006. The ISS crew numbers sometimes fluctuate between 3 and 12 folks, relying on which spacecraft are coming and going from the station, and infrequently embody astronauts from Europe and Japan, in addition to the U.S. and Russia.
The big crew in the intervening time is partly as a result of presence of Wilmore and Williams, who arrived on the station on the primary crewed take a look at flight of the Boeing Starliner. They had been attributable to depart last month, however points with helium leaks on the spacecraft imply they are going to be staying in house some time longer whereas further investigation is carried out.
