Image above: Astronaut Sandra Magnus, KE5FYE, Expedition 18 flight engineer, floats between two Russian Orlan spacesuits with Santa hats in the Columbus laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Station holidays come in bunches

Spaceflight has its compensations.

After experiencing a record-tying 16 arrivals of 2009 as they orbited the Earth, the crew members of the International Space Station celebrated their second Christmas in as many weeks Wednesday.

This one was the Russian Orthodox Christmas. The crew got the day off, doing only required and voluntary activities.

Managers and flight controllers had insisted that for New Year's that the crew continue to observe the Greenwich Mean Time kept aboard the orbiting laboratory, so they got only one day off.

The loss was mitigated some by the fact that no alcoholic beverages are allowed aboard, and besides, the crew members were scheduled to be asleep as their official 2009 began. They had sent down their New Year's greetings to us on Earth earlier -- nine of them actually, in nine different languages.

On Wednesday, cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, RA3DT, spoke with family members during a private conference. Later he spoke to religious leaders in Russia and sent Christmas greetings.

Commander Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, set up equipment and software for an amateur radio session. During the session, Fincke and Lonchakov spoke with students in Montreal.

Throughout the day, crew members performed their daily exercise sessions to counteract the effects of long-term exposure to the microgravity environment of space. They also completed minor station maintenance tasks and inspections.