The Mannequin Challenge trend has exceeded Earth’s boundaries as the group of astronauts that live in the International Space Station has recorded a video performing it. The result was pretty amazing.
Right now, the ISS crew is formed by Thomas Pesquet from France, Oleg Novitskiy, Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrei Borisenko from Russia, Peggy Whitson from the U.S., all commanded by NASA’s Shane Kimbrough. These astronauts have a 6-month mission ahead, but on Thursday, they took the day off to have fun for a while.
The video had no sound until a Twitter user did the editing to make this Mannequin Challenge the most epic one ever. Normally, this kind of videos has Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” as soundtrack.
In the 24-second video published on Twitter, it can be seen how the astronauts help themselves when grabbing solid objects to maintain their stability and don’t move a muscle. The responsible for uploading the video was Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency, as he said that they were having “a bit fun in microgravity” this past Thursday.
“We got the whole crew together and took the #MannequinChallenge to new heights,” he published on Twitter along with the video. “The result is kind of sci-fi spooky don’t you think?” he joked in his Facebook page.
We got the whole crew together and took the #MannequinChallenge to new heights #Proxima pic.twitter.com/vlOglQ3lEh
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) December 29, 2016
Holidays at the International Space Station
The spacecraft in which these five astronauts are living orbits the Earth about 16 times per day. So, where exactly will the crew be located when New Year comes? When should they celebrate the arrival of 2017?
The Space Station that lies about 250 miles above Earth manages its time schedules according to the Greenwich Mean Time. This means that the crew will receive the New Year at the same time as the United Kingdom.
However, they are not able to celebrate as people on Earth. NASA has a strict no alcohol policy in which there is absolutely no excuse. So, these six astronauts will not be making any toasts with champagne or similar drinks.
The good news for the crew is that because New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are on the weekend, they will get a three-day vacation from work until January 2, a NASA spokesman told NBC this Thursday.
After the holidays, the group will continue conducting investigative research in areas like biology, physics, and biotechnology. They hope to perform experiments that allow a better understanding of how lighting affects life in the space station and how microgravity behaves regarding plant growth.
The ISS turned 18 years operating this year as it has rotated Earth about 5,000 times.
Source: The Huffington Post