A Christmas that is out of this world! Cheerful photos show astronauts celebrating the holidays with stockings and trees made from leftover food containers on NASA’s space stations
- The Apollo 8 mission in 1968 was the first time humans spent Christmas in space and hosted a live broadcast on Christmas Eve morning
- It wasn’t until 1973 that astronauts first celebrated Christmas on a NASA space station, Skylab, which also saw the first Christmas tree in space
- The tree was made from leftover food containers and used colored decals as ornaments
- From there, astronauts have set up artificial and real Christmas trees, hung stockings in doorways, and even projected a fiery Christmas tree inside the International Space Station
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More than 200 miles above the Earth’s surface, astronauts enjoy an out-of-this-world Christmas celebration.
Space heroes have spent many holidays away from friends and family, but brought joy to their cramped quarters with Christmas trees, stockings hanging from doors and a Christmas log projected onto the interior of the International Space Station (ISS).
The Apollo 8 mission in 1968 became the first crew to spend the holiday in space, and celebrated by sending home the first image of Earth, along with a live broadcast on Christmas Eve morning.
The first Christmas tree in space: in 1973, the astronauts Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue and Edward G. Gibson spent their holidays aboard NASA’s Skylab, the first American space station. The crew assembled a tree from leftover food containers and decorated it with colored decals
Speaking during the broadcast, Commander Frank Borman described the moon as “wide,” “lonely,” and “forbidding,” but “makes you realize what you have there on Earth.”
And five years later, humans celebrated the first holiday aboard a space station.
Three crew members on the 1973 Skylab 4 mission, a research platform in low Earth orbit, built a Christmas tree from leftover food containers, decorated it with colored decals and topped it with a cardboard cutout in the shape of a comet.
The tradition has since continued through the decades as astronauts spend the holidays singing Christmas carols, exchanging gifts and watching holiday movies in hopes of bringing some joy to the final frontier.
Swinging around the Christmas tree: The makeshift branches were attached to a pole, which was fixed to the ground as the station was weightless. And at the top was a cardboard cutout in the shape of a comet
Deck the halls: Expedition 34, which manned the ISS in 2012, had an actual Christmas tree for the holidays, which they decorated with sparkling pompom ornaments and hung stockings in a doorway. NASA’s Kevin Ford brought his guitar with him on the journey into space and played it on Christmas Day
The First Christmas Carol: The first Christmas in space was in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. The crew, Frank Borman, James Lovell Jr. and William Anders, shared the first image of Earth, which has since been known as the “Blue Marble.” Speaking during a live broadcast from space on Christmas Eve morning, Borman described how lonely the moon is
The holiday season is here: Kayla Barron shows off gifts she wrapped for her crew of six during Expedition 66 in 2021
Santa Claus comes to the ISS: Festive hats are always worn by crew members on Christmas Day, and because the station has zero gravity, the tips of the hats stand straight up. Resupply missions before the holidays brought the astronauts an artificial Christmas tree. Pictured is the Expedition 30 crew in 2011
Christmas isn’t the only holiday celebrated in space: the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission was launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavor in 1993, and mission specialist Jeffery Hoffman became the first person to celebrate Hanukkah on a spacecraft. He brought a small Dreidel that floated in the ship
Expedition 24 flight engineer and NASA astronaut David A. Wolf took a picture wearing his menorah and dreidel to celebrate Hanukkah in 1997. The crew also had a small Christmas tree and dressed up in an astronaut suit to look like Santa Claus
Say Merry Christmas: NASA Astronauts And Russian Cosmonauts Share The ISS And Celebrate The Holidays Together. Valeri I. Tokarev of Roscosmos (left) and NASA astronaut William McArthur of Expedition snapped a celebratory photo of them wearing stockings while they were both on the ISS in 2005
It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas in space: Santa hats are worn every Christmas. In 2006, Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams of NASA and Mikhail Tyurin of Russia showed the hats in a photo
Silent Night: A projection of a Christmas log was shown on the ISS in 2020. The fiery images with stockings hanging over it made it feel like home for astronauts spending the holidays 250 miles above the surface of the earth