#NASA astronauts send Christmas message of ‘resilience’ back to Earth

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, topped with the Crew Dragon capsule, is readied for the first operational NASA commercial crew mission at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

REUTERS

Their Christmas was out of this world — but all they want is peace on Earth.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station beamed season’s greeting back to Earth, sending a message of “resilience” to all amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The resilience of the human spirit is something that we can truly celebrate in this special season,” NASA astronaut Victor Glover said in a video this week.

Resilience is also the name of the SpaceX rocket that brought Glover and three others — fellow NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Shannon Walker and Japanese space program astronaut Soichi Noguchi — to the ISS in November.

“We selected that name in tribute to people around the world and to the teams that help make our mission possible during a year that changed all our lives,” Hopkins, the crew commander, said in the clip.

“We’d also like to remember everyone we’ve lost this year.”

Glover added: “There couldn’t be a more fitting name to describe 2020.”

The four joined NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov on the space station last month.

The entire crew was off-duty on Christmas and spent the day sharing a holiday meal together and calling family and friends. They also decked the halls of the ISS with festive decorations.