Somewhere more than four hundred kilometers above the ground, someone brought out a cake.
Image: NASA Image of the Day · Image credit: NASA/Chris Williams · Image page
This is a photo published on July 24 in the "Image of the Day" section on NASA's official website. In the frame, three people pose side by side inside a module of the International Space Station, holding a cake: from left, Roscosmos cosmonauts Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov, and NASA astronaut Anil Menon. According to NASA, the cake was to celebrate their arrival—a welcoming ceremony four hundred kilometers up.
Departed the same day, arrived the same day
On July 14, the three launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the station that very day. The photo was taken on July 18, when their mission had barely begun: the plan calls for an eight-and-a-half-month stay in orbit. Old residents plus new tenants—the station was bustling with as many as ten people at once. Imagine a welcome dinner in a shared apartment—except here, the cake can't drop crumbs, because crumbs float.
The one behind the camera went home first
The photo is credited to NASA/Chris Williams. He wasn't a dedicated photographer but one of the station's veteran residents—a fellow astronaut. Welcoming newcomers is part of the job for those already on board. The interesting part is the timing: the photo was published on July 24, and just two days later, on July 26, Williams and two crewmates landed back in Kazakhstan aboard another Soyuz, wrapping up roughly eight months in space. In other words, by the time you saw this welcome photo, the person who took it was already on his way home. That's how it goes on the station—a constant cycle of hellos and goodbyes: someone cuts a cake while someone else packs their bags.
In the same section, a little over a week earlier, there was another photo: on launch day, Anil's wife, Anna Menon—herself a NASA astronaut candidate—stood with their children on the ground, looking up as the rocket carrying her husband climbed into the sky. One family, two perspectives, separated by four hundred kilometers.
As a side note, NASA's "Image of the Day" is not the same thing as the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" (APOD) we often write about: the former is selected by NASA editors on workdays and can feature astronauts, Earth, or spacecraft; the latter is curated by astronomers and focuses solely on the cosmos. This article is filed under its publication date of July 24.
Cake is an earthly tradition, but once you bring it into orbit, it becomes a little piece of home. If one day you moved to a new home four hundred kilometers away, what small tradition would you take with you?
Sources: NASA official website (Image of the Day, International Space Station Blog)