ISS Crew to Raise Toasts for New Year's Eve 16 Times

The crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will have an opportunity to raise their drinks 16 times as they orbit the globe on New Year's Eve, NASA said.

Zooming around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, the ISS will pass 16 times over places on the planet where it is midnight, although the year 2015 starts officially for the station at midnight by Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in London.

Expedition 42's Commander Barry Wilmore and NASA's Terry Virts, Russia's Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti said they planned to celebrate with fruit juice toasts, according to the US space agency.

The crew is scheduled to be in its sleep shift on New Year's Day, which is their day off, but they may decide to stay up late for the occasion, NASA suggested.

According to the agency, the space travelers spent the last day of 2014 working on different experiments and preparing for the arrival of the next cargo ship, which is due to arrive on January 8.

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ISS Crew to Raise Toasts for New Year's Eve 16 Times