Space station crew to celebrate New Year, but at what time? - Digital Trends

The Expedition 68 unit from left: NASA astronaut Frank Rubio; Roscosmos cosmonaut Dmitri Petelin; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata; NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Anna Kikina. NASA

The 7 astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are getting acceptable to spot successful 2023, but however bash they cognize what clip to outcry “Happy New Year!”?

The ISS orbits Earth astatine 17,500 mph and truthful sees aggregate sunrises and sunsets passim a azygous Earth day, truthful you mightiness ideate that it’s casual for astronauts to suffer way of time.

Fortunately, erstwhile astronauts started surviving aboard the orbital outpost much than 2 decades ago, abstraction officials considered this conundrum and came up with a elemental solution.

So that ISS inhabitants would beryllium capable to decently signifier space-based operations and activities, NASA and its planetary partners decided to acceptable clocks aboard the ISS to the Universal Time Clock (UTC), a clip modular that corresponds with the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) portion successful London.

It means that each 12 months, a caller twelvemonth officially begins aboard the abstraction presumption astatine 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) connected January 31, which is midnight UTC/GMT.

Of course, it’s imaginable that each unit subordinate mightiness privation to besides observe the accomplishment of a caller twelvemonth according to the clip portion of their location connected Earth.

At the moment, the ISS unit comprises Americans Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada; Russians Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina; and Koichi Wakata from Japan, truthful determination could beryllium rather a fewer celebrations taking spot aboard the abstraction presumption successful conscionable a fewer days from now.

The likelihood is that the astronauts volition stitchery for a azygous New Year’s enactment wherever they’ll bask immoderate peculiar nutrient treats and bespeak connected their clip successful abstraction truthful far. There won’t beryllium immoderate champagne celebration, however, arsenic intoxicant isn’t allowed connected the abstraction station.

Fancy uncovering retired much astir however astronauts unrecorded and enactment aboard the International Space Station? Digital Trends has you covered.

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