International space station to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner

The two US, one Japanese and three Russian crew members on the International Space Station will enjoy a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, NASA says. The menu will include traditional holiday favorites with a space-food flair, such as irradiated smoked turkey, thermostabilized yams and freeze-dried green beans. The crew's meal also will include NASA's cornbread dressing, home-style potatoes, cranberries, cherry-blueberry cobbler and the best view from any Thanksgiving table, Tom Marshburn, a NASA astronaut, says. Marshburn, a veteran of two spaceflights, and Vickie Kloeris, NASA's manager of the International Space Station food system, will discuss the space station's Thanksgiving menus in live satellite interviews from 7-8:30 a.m. EST Wednesday. The interviews will be carried on NASA Television. Marshburn logged 146 days in space as part of space station expeditions 35 and 36 beginning last December. Marshburn spent 16 days in space in July 2009 as part of space shuttle mission STS-127, a space station assembly mission. Kloeris has been involved in space food development and production since 1985. She has managed the space station food system since January 2000 and is responsible for every aspect of the station's food system, including all U.S. flight food shipments and new food item development. NASA is researching and developing ways to extend the shelf-life of food needed for deep space missions, and how to minimize the volume of packaging, Kloeris said. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio will celebrate the U.S. holiday with their Expedition 38 colleagues Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Oleg Kotov, Mikhail Tyurin and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency.