NASA astronauts Meghan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough (top middle), Mark Vande Hei and Thomas Pesquet (bottom), review preparations for the European Space Agency's spacewalk on June 10, 2021. They won't be able to spend the Fourth of July 2021 on a long weekend.While Americans celebrate Fourth of July by taking a day off work, astronauts from the International Space Station will be spending their vacation preparing for the return of a cargo ship to Earth.U.S. astronauts are federal employees and have Sundays off. The federal holiday, which is observed on Monday (July 5), falls on July 4, this year. There's no time to relax with the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship scheduled to leave the space station Tuesday, July 6.Space.com spoke to Dan Huot, NASA spokesperson, in an email. He stated that the crew will be working on Monday "primarily to finish up studies and get ready for Dragon’s departure." "As always, if crew members miss a holiday or off-day, the teams will find another day for them."Related: Holidays In Space: An Astronaut Photo AlbumAlthough astronauts can't light fireworks in the orbiting laboratory, they can still enjoy Sundays with their families by video chat.Three of the seven astronauts currently onboard the International Space Station are NASA astronauts: Shane Kimbrough and Meghan McArthur. Two Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr dubrov, and Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Akihiko Hishide, an astronaut of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, (JAXA), are also aboard.Pesquet, Hoshide and the three U.S. crew members have spent several days prepping the Dragon cargo spacecraft for its return home to Earth. They will be loading crucial research samples into the Dragon on Monday. Scientists on Earth will analyze the various research samples after the Dragon crashes down.According to NASA, SpaceX's cargo ship will dock at the station at 11:05 AM EDT (1505 GMT) on Tuesday. It will then splash down in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida two days later.The cargo ship arrived at Station June 5, to bring supplies and experiments to Expedition 65 crew members, including new solar arrays. This is what astronauts have been trying to install through a series spacewalks.Follow us on Facebook @Spacedotcom and Twitter @Spacedotcom
