The New Year 2022 celebration became a record-breaking event in orbit, featuring a total of 10 astronauts from two space stations.
The New Year 2022 celebration on the ISS. (Photo: Roscosmos)
On January 1, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that 10 individuals gathered to celebrate the New Year 2022 in low Earth orbit. These included 7 members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and 3 members on China’s Tiangong Space Station. As a result, this event became the most crowded party in orbit in the history of space exploration.
The New Year celebration has been held in space regularly since 1986. (Photo: Roscosmos).
Astronaut Anton Shkaplerov, commander of the ISS Expedition 66, shared some details about the party held on the ISS. He mentioned that the menu would include black caviar, tangerines, and “herring under a fur coat”, a traditional Russian dish. Shkaplerov has had the fortune of celebrating the New Year in space four times, specifically in the years 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022.
Additionally, Shkaplerov and his colleague Pyotr Dubrov shared images of their meal preparations for the celebration on social media platform Instagram.
Like many expatriates, the ISS astronauts raised their glasses, specifically apple juice, to welcome the start of 2022 multiple times.
The first toast was at midnight Moscow time, followed by celebrations according to German time—home to European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer—then Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time zone the ISS operates in. Finally, they celebrated at midnight in Washington for the astronauts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The New Year celebration has been regularly held in space since 1986 when the Soviet Union launched the Mir Space Station.
