In the U.S., Thanksgiving is a time-honored tradition harking back to 1621, at least on Terra. In orbit, it’s got a history as well, however an admittedly shorter one.

Ten astronauts aboard the NASA space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station will congregate in the well-named Harmony module of the space station to celebrate Thanksgiving in orbit.

"We're very fortunate to be up here in space. The only thing that would make it better is to be with our families," said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie “Toolbag” Stefanyshyn-Piper, who will unfortunately still be in space for her husband Glenn's birthday tomorrow. "For everyone on Earth, I just hope everyone will have as nice of a Thanksgiving as we will."

The holiday has been celebrated aboard the space station for eight years in a row now, but Thanksgiving in space first happened in 1973, with the three crewmembers of NASA’s Skylab 4 to the American space station. The three astronauts – Gerald Carr, William Pogue and Edward Gibson – also celebrated Christmas aboard Skylab with a makeshift Christmas tree made of empty food cans.

Turkey Day would not be celebrated in orbit again for another ten years, but nobody knows what went on at the 1989 dinner as NASA's STS-33 flight aboard Discovery was a classified spaceflight assigned to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Orbiting shuttle missions with American astronauts aboard celebrated the holiday in 1991, 1996 and 1997. The last two were aboard the shuttle Columbia, while she was docked with MIR – the Russian space station.

The last NASA shuttle that took astronauts to orbit during Thanksgiving was, coincidentally, also Endeavour; it flew its crew to the ISS during the joint STS-113 and Expedition 5 mission in 2002, as the crew earned its dinner well, following a spacewalk on Thanksgiving Day.

Peggy Whitson, the NASA astronaut who served as the station’s flight engineer and later on commander of the outpost’s Expedition 16 crew, fondly remembered her Thanksgiving together with Endeavour’s STS-113 astronauts.

''Blueberry-cherry cobbler, compliments of our guests, and served on a tortilla was a real dessert treat for the Station crew, since that was not included in our meal rotations,'' she wrote in a NASA interview. ''Celebrating this holiday in space with some visiting friends was a very special experience, one that I will remember fondly in Thanksgivings to come.''

Currently, the latest orbital Turkey Day is in full romp with freeze-dried smoked turkey, green beans and cornbread dressing being heated up and injected with water to be served to astronauts floating about the room instead of sitting down at a table. And as mission control transmitted Electric Light Orchestra's "Hold on Tight" early this Thursday to wake the crew up, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper answered radioed back a greeting: "We give thanks for what we have and never stop dreaming."