peggy whitson

Peggy Whitson, the American astronaut spending her 130th day in space, said on Sunday that she was happy in orbit, but maybe she brought along too much shrimp.

"Sometimes, when you come to space, your tastes change. One of my favorite foods on the ground is shrimp, and up here I can't stand it," said Whitson, the science officer on the International Space Station .

A quick check of the station's manifest² showed that Whitson had planned more than 40 shrimp meals for her stay.

"The guys like it because they get all my shrimp," she said, referring to her two Russian crewmates, Valery Korzun and Sergei Treshcvev.

The three members of the space station's Expedition Five team held a joint³ news conference with the six astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis on Sunday.

"I'm having a great time up here. It's fun to live here and do the science," said Whitson, a biochemist conducting and monitoring dozens of studies on the station.

When someone asked about her plans for Christmas, Whitson said "It's hard to imagine being back home because I guess I feel like this is my home right now. I don't have my husband, but other than that, this is my home."

Whitson, due to return to Earth with Korzun and Treschev aboard a U.S. shuttle in November, said some changes in space take more getting used to than others.

Salsa can usually overcome space blandness⁴. "We could probably eat paper if we had it with salsa," she said.

But calluses are another matter. In weightlessness, she never actually stands, but does sway about with her feet in foot restraints.

"It was really interesting to me to lose the calluses from the bottom of your feet and to get calluses on the top of your feet after being up here for a few months," she said.