Here’s How ISS Astronauts Will Celebrate New Year’s Eve

Photo Credit: NASA

Celebrating big occasions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is a long-running tradition for crewmembers. The seven astronauts currently posted at the orbital outpost are now prepping to welcome 2023 in style. But how will they decide what time to scream “Happy New Year”?

The ISS orbits our planet at a whopping speed of 17,500 mph and hence witnesses multiple sunrises and sunsets in a single Earth day, so one might think that keeping track of time would be difficult for ISS crewmembers. Thankfully, that isn’t the case.

Simple Solution To Track Time

It’s been over two decades since astronauts started living aboard the ISS. Space officials came up with a simple solution to keep track of time in space. It enabled ISS inhabitants to properly organize space-based operations and activities.

NASA, along with its international partners decided to set the clocks on the orbital outpost to the Universal Time Clock (UTC), a time standard that follows the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) zone in London.

It means that every year, a new year kicks off officially at the ISS at 7 PM ET (5:30 AM IST) on January 31. It’s likely that each member aboard the ISS might want to celebrate a new year as per the time zone of their home on Earth.

New Year’s Party Plans In Space

Currently, the crew aboard the orbital outpost includes American astronauts Frank Rubio, Josh Cassada, and Nicole Mann; Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Anna Kikina, and Dmitri Petelin; and Japan’s Koichi Wakata, so people can expect some celebrations aboard the space station in the coming days.

The crew members will likely gather for a combined New Year’s party where they treat themselves with special food and share fond memories of their time away from Earth. The party, however, might not witness any drunk conversations as crew members aren’t allowed to consume alcohol aboard the ISS.

NASA’s Christmas Celebration

To celebrate Christmas, NASA shared a new sonification of space that showed the massive star RS Puppis. The sonification offers an auditory way to experience the image of the enormously-big star.

The sonification is based on the image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The legendary Hubble Space Telescope captured the image of RS Puppis which the sonification is based on back in 2013.