Skip to main content

Watch Santa drop by the International Space Station

Santa has made an unprecedented stop at the International Space Station at the start of his global gift-giving adventure.

Presumably docking via the space station’s recently delivered Bishop Airlock (it’s quite large and therefore able to accommodate Santa’s paunch), Santa popped into the orbiting outpost to drop off some presents for the current seven-member crew.

Recommended Videos

A video (below) posted on NASA’s official Twitter account on Christmas Eve shows Santa and his reindeer approaching the station 250 miles above Earth.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] satellites have spotted Santa on a true path straight to the ISS and the astronauts who are living and working on board,” the video’s narrator says.

Are you waiting up for a visit from Santa’s sleigh? Our @NASA_Astronauts are doing the same! This year @NORADSanta is making a special stop to the International @Space_Station to deliver presents.

Track where else he's going: https://t.co/TAfztY2fO7 pic.twitter.com/H0RHyTb7fC

— NASA (@NASA) December 24, 2020

After visiting the station, Santa set off to embark on the main task of squeezing down chimneys and eating lots of cookies (oh, and delivering presents, too). You can follow his progress throughout the evening by using a Santa tracker provided by Google or NORAD.

Santa’s visit to the ISS came shortly after Expedition 64 crew members Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, Kate Rubins, and Soichi Noguchi offered a few words on what it’s like to spend the holiday season in space.

Thoughts, Gifts, and a Challenge: An International Space Station Holiday

NASA and its international partners have recently been celebrating 20 years of continuous human habitation aboard the station. Up to now, more than 240 individuals from 18 countries have visited the space-based laboratory, and NASA celebrated its 300th spacewalk involving American astronauts in July. These videos, made by different astronauts over the years, offer fascinating insight into how crew members work, rest, and play aboard the station.

The 357-foot-long space-based laboratory orbits Earth every 90 minutes, traveling along at a speedy 5 miles per second. When it passes overhead, the sun’s reflection on the station’s solar panels makes it highly visible from Earth. Interested in seeing it? Digital Trends has an article telling you how to spot the International Space Station from your backyard, no telescope required!

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
This rocket-launch photo is unlike any you’ve seen before
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket visible as a streak of light from bottom right to top left.

Blue Origin launched its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket for the first time last week, and news sites and social media feeds were quick to share dramatic images of the 98-meter-tall rocket heading toward the heavens.

At the same time, NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured the launch in a long exposure from the International Space Station (ISS) some 250 miles above Earth. The result is a rocket-launch photo unlike any you’ve seen before:

Read more
Watch SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft crash to Earth
Starship stage separation.

SpaceX nailed the landing of its first-stage Super Heavy booster during the seventh test of its mighty Starship rocket on Thursday, but the upper-stage Starship spacecraft suffered what SpaceX likes to call a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (in regular-speak, it blew up) soon after stage-separation.

A short while later, clips started appearing on social media apparently showing bits of the uncrewed Starship falling back to Earth near the Turks and Caicos Islands about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) east of the rocket’s launch site near Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX chief Elon Musk reposted one of them, saying: "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!" However, it was later reported that the FAA had to divert a number of flights in the area to ensure aircraft were kept away from the descending debris. It's also currently unknown if any of the debris reached land or if all of it landed in the sea.

Read more
How to watch SpaceX’s seventh Starship launch on Thursday
The Super Heavy booster's Raptor engines powering the Starship's launch on November 19, 2024.

UPDATE: SpaceX has delayed Wednesday's launch attempt. The article below has been updated to include details of the new schedule.

SpaceX is making final preparations for the seventh launch of the Starship, the most powerful rocket ever to fly.

Read more