Skip to footer

Space station astronauts send New Year's greeting

In a New Year's message, British astronaut Tim Peake and NASA astronauts Tim Kopra and Scott Kelly wished Earth's inhabitants a happy 2016.

|
NASA
NASA astronauts Scott Kelly (center) and Tim Kopra (left) and British spaceflyer Tim Peake send New Year's greetings to Earth from the International Space Station.

Happy New Year from space!

Three of the six people living aboad the International Space Station have beamed home a special New Year's video message for the 7.3 billion people confined to Earth's surface.

"I'd like to wish everyone down on our beautiful planet Earth a very happy New Year, and a fantastic 2016," British spaceflyer Tim Peake said in the 50-second video, which NASA released Monday (Dec. 28).

NASA astronauts Tim Kopra and Scott Kelly also said a few words.

"We'd like to say what a privilege it is to serve on board the International Space Station, and how grateful we are for all the teams on the ground that support our flying in space, and the science on board," Kopra said.

The trio wrapped up the brief message with a synchronized backward somersault, and a few (unsynchronized) waves.

Kelly is about nine months into an unprecedented yearlong mission aboard the orbiting lab, during which researchers are assessing how he and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko respond physiologically and psychologically to long-duration spaceflight. This effort is aided by studying Kelly's identical twin brother, Mark, himself a former NASA astronaut, who stayed on the ground and serves as a sort of control.

Crewmembers typically live aboard the space station for 5.5 months at a time. The main goal of the 12-month stint of Kelly and Kornienko, NASA officials have said, is to help prepare for future crewed missions to Mars, which will require a lengthy journey through deep space.

Kopra and Peake arrived at the orbiting lab on Dec. 15, along with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko. The other crewmember of the station's current Expedition 46 (along with Kelly, Kornienko, Kopra, Peake and Malenchenko) is cosmonaut Sergey Volkov.

Peake is a spaceflight rookie, whereas his five fellow crewmembers have all been to orbit before — some of them a number of times. For example, the yearlong mission is Kelly's fourth spaceflight, and Malenchenko has now been to space on six different occasions.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on Space.com.

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Space station astronauts send New Year's greeting
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0104/Space-station-astronauts-send-New-Year-s-greeting
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe