Shuttle Crew Ready For ‘Stabilized’ Bird

Columbia’s astronauts already can taste that Thanksgiving dinner, but they’ll have to wait until Friday before they get to eat the “room-temperature, stabilized” turkey.

The five shuttle crew members won’t have time Thursday to linger over a holiday meal. That night, Thomas Jones and Tamara Jernigan will float outside for a six-hour spacewalk to test station-building tools.

“We’ll be hitting the deck running that morning,” Jones told NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, who called Tuesday to congratulate the astronauts on their satellite work.

“When we get back inside, believe me, we’ll be hungry for that Thanksgiving turkey,” Jones said. “We’ve got some off-the-shelf, kind of supermarket, room-temperature, stabilized turkey dinners that we’ll be digging into right after I get that helmet off.”

Also on board: cranberry sauce and pumpkin-colored cakes.