This is what the Space Station astronauts are eating for Thanksgiving

Most people who celebrate Thanksgiving get a day off - and astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are no different.

However, while you might be used to a table groaning with turkey and every side you can possibly imagine, things are a bit different in space.

Andreas (Andy) Mogensen, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara and Satoshi Furukawa are currently living and working on the ISS, and posted a Thanksgiving message on X (formerly known as Twitter), giving a breakdown of what they'll be eating on November 23.

@NASA on X

"On board Space Station, we’re looking forward to a quiet day off and also a nice Thanksgiving dinner together," said Texan astronaut O'Hara, who has been in space since September.

"We brought a couple of our foods to share with you - we’ve got some roast turkey, cranberry sauce, butternut squash - one of my favourites - corn, and to finish, cranapple dessert."

So far, it all sounds like a traditional Thanksgiving meal - but it certainly doesn't look like it.

The turkey O'Hara showed off is in a bag, the cranberry sauce was canned, while the sides and dessert all came in packets - hardly the most appetizing Thanksgiving dinner we've ever seen.

Gregg Newton/Getty Images

It might not seem like much, but eating in space has come a long way since we first sent astronauts up there.

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space in 1961, and he had to eat his meals via a squeezy tube - just so the food didn't go flying around the low-gravity spacecraft.

We certainly wouldn't have wanted to clean that mess up.

Things are a bit better now, with food tending to be either refrigerated or dehydrated, and cooked in microwaves or convection ovens on the ISS.

But we're sure the astronauts aren't too fussed about having cranberry sauce from a can this Thanksgiving - after all, their meal has one of the best views we can imagine.

Japanese astronaut Furukawa, who has been on the ISS with Iranian-American Moghbeli and Danish Mogensen since the SpaceX Crew-7 launched them there in August, finished the Thanksgiving message by saying: "I’d like to express our gratitude to all that support us. Owing to you we work on board the International Space Station to improve our life on Earth and prepare for the upcoming human exploration to the Moon, Mars and beyond."

It's already been a ground-breaking stint on the ISS for this group of astronauts - Moghbeli became the second Iranian-American to reach space on Crew-7, and earlier this month she and O'Hara did the fourth-ever all-female spacewalk.