We are grateful for those working who cannot be home with their families.

We know that not everyone is lucky enough to spend the holiday with their families. Among those are the astronauts on the International Space Station, orbiting about 220 miles (334 km) above Earth! Astronauts do get to take the day off to celebrate Thanksgiving, but not at home surrounded with family and friends at the dinner table. On the ISS you can’t really cook a turkey (and carving it would be a disaster…), so instead they eat it out of a pouch. While the menu may not be as good as home cooking, the view out the window is hard to beat.

See the video Thanksgiving in Space and enjoy a recent Thanksgiving greeting from the ISS crew here.

We are grateful for technology allowing for food growth in Space.

No matter how far humans venture into space, we will always need food and water. Did you know that astronauts have grown crops like romaine lettuce, mizuna, and even potatoes in space? No word on whether they tried making mashed potatoes though… Maybe that will have to wait for potato farming on the Moon or Mars.

Any farming done in space will require water. NASA’s Artemis III, a human mission to the Moon, will explore near the South Pole in ~2028, and part of their mission will be to investigate deposits of water ice. The ice is of great scientific interest, but it is also a potential resource. 

We are grateful to explore the planets and share our excitement. 

We are lucky in so many ways. We live at a time when exciting discoveries about our Solar System and our universe are being made all the time, and we even get to make some of them! We are also grateful to be able to share the excitement with all of you! 

We strongly believe in the value of communicating science to everyone, whether it is through research papers and abstracts intended for professionals in the field, or talks, blogs, and social media posts intended for everyone. If you happen to be in the Flagstaff area, let us know and we will happily lead you on a tour of our facility (and if you’re not in the Flagstaff area, fear not – we are working on a virtual tour so that anyone anywhere can “visit” us).

Like Thanksgiving itself, planetary science brings people together.  Thirteen years ago today, people from around the world watched with bated breath as the rocket carrying the Curiosity rover to Mars left Earth. Every major planetary launch and landing unites us to celebrate, marvel, and feel gratitude to live at a time when the impossible becomes possible and we can reach out and touch the intangible. 

Even as we express our gratitude for friends and family and good food this Thanksgiving, we at Astrogeology will also be thinking of all of the many other things that we are grateful for.