ISS crew celebrate new year’s eve 16 times!

The Expedition 42 crew orbiting Earth on the International Space Station gets the opportunity to celebrate New Year’s Eve a whopping 16 times as it circles the globe at 17,500 miles an hour.

Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and his crew, which includes NASA’s Terry Virts, Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, say they plan to celebrate with fruit juice toasts.

The year 2015 starts officially for the station crew at 7 p.m. EST Dec. 31, which is midnight by the Universal Time Clock (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in London.

The crew is scheduled to be in its sleep shift, but may elect to stay up late since it has a day off planned for New Year’s Day.

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore and Flight Engineer Terry Virts of NASA wish the world a happy New Year during downlink messages from the orbital complex on Dec. 17. Wilmore has been aboard the research lab since late September and will remain in orbit until mid-March 2015. Virts arrived at the station in late November and will stay until mid-May 2015. Text and video credit: NASA.

Video below:

Jr. Editorial Staff
Latest posts by Jr. Editorial Staff (see all)

Tell us your thoughts on this article. If logged in with any of your Wordpress.com, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or registered on this site before, then you can simply write your comment below. Thanks and appreciate your feedback.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.