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Two men and a woman speak from the international space station. | Credit: NASA
Like most of their compatriots here on terra firma, the three Americans living off Earth will get to put their feet up today (Sept. 7).
NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon will get Labor Day off aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the agency said on Friday (Sept. 4). European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, will also be off duty.
However, the three Russian cosmonauts living on the ISS will have to clock in as usual.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir (left) and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot work together inside the International Space Station's Quest airlock during spacesuit fit and leak checks. | Credit: NASA
The trio — Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina — "will be busy monitoring the Progress 94 resupply spacecraft when it undocks on Monday, packed with trash and obsolete gear, from the Poisk module," NASA officials said in an update on Friday.
"It will be replaced by the Progress 96 resupply spacecraft after it launches from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sept. 9 for an automated docking two days later to Poisk's vacated port," they added.
Adenot, Feyaev, Hathaway and Meir arrived at the ISS in mid-February on SpaceX's Crew-12 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon are relative newcomers, reaching the station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14.
NASA astronauts on long-duration missions to the ISS generally work a relatively normal schedule, getting weekends and major holidays off. Such downtime is crucial to mission success, as it helps the spaceflyers stay happy, healthy and productive.
They may not be able to mark the holidays in exactly the same ways we do here on Earth, however. For example, the astronauts won't be grilling any hamburgers or hot dogs today, as open flames are verboten on the ISS.
As today's schedule shows, international crewmates do not always have the same days off in orbit. But they try to celebrate major holidays like Christmas together, both to cement the bonds that exist between them and to take the sting out of being so far away from family and friends.
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