Sunita Williams to celebrate Thanksgiving in space with ‘smoked turkey, mashed potatoes’

New Delhi(The Uttam Hindu): Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams is set to celebrate Thanksgiving in space with ‘smoked turkey, mashed potatoes’.

Thanksgiving is observed every year in the US on the fourth Thursday of November to honour the blessings and harvest of the year.

“Our Crew up here just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family who are down on Earth and everyone who is supporting us,” Williams said in a video message, shared by NASA on Wednesday.

The astronauts shared that NASA has provided them with food items like butternut squash, apples, sardines, and smoked turkey for the occasion.

In a recent interview with NBC News, Williams shared her plans of celebrating the day, along with other astronauts -- Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov -- aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The plans include watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a lavish feast with “some smoked turkey, some cranberry, apple cobbler, green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.”

In June Williams and Butch Willmore became the first to ride the much-delayed Starliner, developed by Boeing.

What began as an eight-day sojourn on the International Space Station (ISS) has now extended to eight months in space for Williams and Willmore as the faulty Starliner was declared unfit for human travel by NASA.

While Starliner is back on Earth unharmed, Williams is expected to return to Earth onboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February 2025.

Amid concerns for their prolonged stay in space, NASA recently said that both Williams and Willmore “are safe aboard the space station”. Williams also said that she is “feeling good, working out, and eating right,” amid claims of her weight loss in space.

The Indian-Origin astronaut also celebrated Diwali "from 260 miles above the earth on the ISS".

According to NASA, "Sunita has spent a cumulative total of 322 days in space”, and she is the second woman astronaut with the highest number of spacewalks.