Life on the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) is something however unusual. The microgravity circumstances imply you spend most of your time floating across the place, and the views from the home windows are particular, to say the least. Popping outdoors requires donning protecting clothes, and going to the lavatory is a extra difficult course of than again on terra firma.
And as a result of ISS orbiting Earth at round 17,000 mph, astronauts stationed there witness 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in each 24-hour interval. So how will the present crew — NASA astronauts Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, and Nick Hague, along with Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner — know when to rejoice the arrival of 2025?
As 2024 involves a detailed at the moment, the Exp 72 crew will see 16 sunrises and sunsets whereas hovering into the New 12 months. Seen listed here are a number of sunsets pictured through the years from the orbital outpost. pic.twitter.com/DdlvSCoKo1
— Worldwide Area Station (@Space_Station) December 31, 2024
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Effectively, when earthlings started residing aboard the area station almost 1 / 4 of a century in the past, area officers spent a while fascinated by this very subject earlier than deciding on an answer. They determined to set the clocks aboard the ISS to the Common Time Clock (UTC), a time normal that’s carefully associated to the Greenwich Imply Time (GMT) zone in London.
It implies that a brand new 12 months formally begins aboard the space-based laboratory at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) on January 31, which is midnight UTC/GMT. In order you learn this, it’s already 2025 aboard the area station!
It’s true that every crew member could need to see within the new 12 months in response to the time zone of their residence on Earth. However contemplating the U.S. and Russia have a complete of 17 time zones between them, this might make for one very lengthy get together.
What normally occurs is that the astronauts choose an agreed time and meet up for a celebration inside one of many station’s many modules. They’ll get pleasure from some particular meals treats, although a champagne celebration is out of the query as alcohol isn’t allowed on the ISS.
Two astronauts who earlier this 12 months by no means imagined they’d be in orbit on this particular night are American astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. The pair arrived on the ISS in June on the primary crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft. However a number of technical points with the Starliner meant that for security causes, the automobile needed to return residence with out them. Williams and Wilmore at the moment are anticipated to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in March. It’s been fairly an journey for the pair, and seeing in a brand new 12 months 250 miles above Earth will probably be absolutely be a reminiscence they’ll cherish endlessly.
