Six crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) will celebrate the New Year 15 times, but the crew will toast only three times, the Russian Flight Control Center announced today.
Russians Mikhail Tyurin, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky, as well as Japanese Koichi Wakata and Americans Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins will toast first at midnight in Moscow, then at midnight at the US Air Traffic Control Center in Houston, and then at midnight in Greenwich .
The ISS is a joint project of six space agencies of the USA, Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil and the European Union.
The space station is in orbit around the Earth at an altitude of 360 kilometers (220 miles), a type of orbit commonly called low orbit.
The actual height changes every few kilometers because the atmospheric resistance lowers the orbit and occasionally the orbit is corrected (raised). The station loses 65 to 100 meters in height per day. The duration of one orbit (orbital period) is about 92 minutes.
The New Year has already arrived on the islands in the Pacific. A traditional pyrotechnic spectacle was organized in Sydney.
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