Happy Holidays, Air and Space Style
Thanksgiving
Podcast
Get the Inside Scoop on Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a holiday staple for almost 100 years, and the balloons have been a part of it for nearly as long. We got the download on these helium-filled works of art that aren't all that different from the hot-air cousins.
From the Archives
Suitably clad in a custom-made flying suit and sporting a pair of goggles, President Warren G. Harding's 1921 Thanksgiving turkey arrived in nearby College Park, MD via air mail.
"With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly" is a famous line from the television show WKRP in Cincinnati, and one we hear whenever we see this 1910 postcard from our collection.
Companies giving their employees turkeys to celebrate the holidays was a common occurrence. In this 1945 picture, Northwestern Aeronautical Corporation sends their workers home with the bird.
Yes, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have celebrated Thanksgiving. The meal was prepared months in advanced by NASA food scientists.
Commercial Flight
Flying for the Holidays?
In the United States, the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the following Sunday are the busiest travel days of the year. However, what this travel has looked like has changed over time.
Winter Solstice
Video
What is the solstice?
Solstice refers to both the shortest day of the year (winter solstice) and the longest (summer solstice).
This happens when the Earth’s tilt is the furthest away from the sun in winter, or closest to the sun in summer.
Celebrate the solstice by listening to an album unlike any other.
Celebrate the celestial wonder of the winter solstice by listening to Under Ancient Skies, a collaboration between the Museum and Grammy Award-winning musician and producer Diplo.
Explore how our understanding of the cosmos has changed (and remained the same) over space and time, as cultures across the world are connected under the same skies.
Astronomy
Hanukkah
In December 1993, astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman celebrated Hanukkah on board Space Shuttle Endeavour with a dreidel and a small traveling Menorah he brought with him on STS-61.
Hoffman travelled on the Space Shuttle five times, logging over 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space.
Holiday Socks, In Space
Astronaut Jessica Meir posted this photo with the message "Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate it on Earth!"
Meir, together with Christina Koch, were the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk.
Christmas
“Is this Santa Claus?”
That wasn't the question Colonel Harry Shoup, the Director of Operations at Continental Air Defense Command, was expecting when he picked up his phone.
Discover how one phone call helped lead to a beloved holiday tradition of NORAD's Santa tracker.
"We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit ... very low, looks like he might be going to re-enter soon ... I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit.” And then Mission Control heard sleigh bells and the tune of Jingle Bells.
Astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford snuck jingle bells and a harmonica aboard Gemini VI when launched on December 15, 196. They attached dental floss and Velcro to the instruments so they could be hung on the wall of the spacecraft when not in use, and surprised Mission Control with the Santa-sighting.
"I could hear the voices at Mission Control getting tense," Stafford remembered, "when I talked about sighting something else up there ... Then, after we finished the song, [Mission Control's] Elliot See relaxed and just said, 'You're too much.'"
“Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus”
The crew of Apollo 8 spent Christmas Eve 1968 orbiting the Moon—the first mission to do so, in fact the first mission to leave the Earth’s orbit.
The astronauts held a live broadcast as they orbited the Moon. “We were told that … we would have the largest audience that has ever listened to a human voice.” They shared messages of peace and closing with a wish for everyone “on the good Earth.”
On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 had to leave lunar orbit to return home. Mission Control waited anxiously for word it had worked when astronaut Jim Lovell radioed “Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.” On Earth, Ken Mattingly replied “That’s affirmative. You are the best ones to know.”
New Year's Eve
When do you ring in New Year on the International Space Station?
The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) includes astronauts from across the globe. So how do you decide when to celebrate.
The decision is actually easy: time on the ISS follows Greenwich Mean Time, meaning the astronauts will technically ring in the new year as people in London, Reykjavik, and Dakar.