NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Donald Pettit, Nick Hague and Barry Wilmore share a Thanksgiving message from the ISS

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Donald Pettit, Nick Hague and Barry Wilmore share a Thanksgiving message from the ISS

Four NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) sent a Thanksgiving message to Earth on Tuesday, November 25, ahead of Thursday’s holiday.

Sunita Williams began by wishing a “Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family on Earth and everyone who supports us.”

Their colleagues Donald Pettit and Nick Hague then presented some packaged foods they would eat for Thanksgiving dinner, including Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, apples and spices, and smoked turkey.

Barry Wilmore ended the video by saying what the astronauts were grateful for.

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“There aren’t many places where you can actually lie on the ceiling and this is one of them. We are grateful for weightlessness. It’s fantastic,” Wilmore said. “We are grateful for our nation, which is a spacefaring nation, which allows us to live freely, to say what we believe is important, and so many other things.”

When Wilmore and Williams launched on June 5, they were originally scheduled to stay on the ISS for just a week and return on June 14, but their return has been delayed several times since then.

Norm Knight, head of NASA’s flight operations directorate, acknowledged that Wilmore and Williams’ families will face great hardship as they wait months for their loved ones to return, but noted that every astronaut knows the risks, including extended stays belong on the space station.

ABC News contributed to this report.

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