During Thanksgiving, people take the time to be thankful and appreciate their blessings and it's also the time of year to spend time with family and friends and celebrate life, on Earth. Astronauts on the other hand are working in lower Earth orbit aboard the space laboratory known as the International Space Station where they are literally away from their family and loved ones. So how do they celebrate Thanksgiving in space? 

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The crew aboard the ISS posted a new video where astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren explain how they will be spending Thanksgiving in the space station some 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. This means that they will be having dinner in microgravity conditions and everything else appears to be similar the way humans on Earth celebrate Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in space also symbolizes the coming together of astronauts from different countries where they celebrate together one of the most important holidays in American history. NASA astronauts Kelly and Lindgren will also spend their Thanksgiving with the other members of the ISS crew namely Mikhail Kornienko, Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Volkov from Russia and Kimiya Yui from Japan.

The astronauts also showed what their Thanksgiving meal would consist of, where the feast included candied yams in pouches and rehydrated corn. The meal, of course, includes smoked turkey as well however, this space turkey dish was prepared using an irradiation method. 

Since Thanksgiving is also a holiday in space, three members will finally get a day off as Kelly, Lindgren and Yui will get an opportunity to spend more talk time with family and friends on Earth. Kelly adds that they are also going to watch some football later in the afternoon.

The astronauts also shared their messages of gratitude despite the unconventional Thanksgiving celebration in zero gravity. Lindgren expresses his thanks, where he is extremely grateful for the opportunity to live in the amazing orbiting laboratory as the ISS is also evidence that can lead to great possibilities in space and beyond if nations work together by cooperating, communicating and collaborating together for peaceful means.

Kelly also had the chance to express and realize what he is thankful for, and he says that being able to become part of the ISS allowed him the opportunity to see how it is to become a citizen of Earth. Lindgren will be returning to Earth on December 11 while Kelly will finish his one year long mission on the ISS by the end of March 2016.

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