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Celebrating Father's Day -- from Space!

Front row: Cmdr Pavel Vinogradov (left) and Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin. Back: Flight Engineers Alexander Misurkin, Chris Cassidy, Luca Parmitano and Karen Nyberg. Image credit: NASA

Sunday, June 16, 2013, 2:12 PM -

While kids are (presumably) spoiling their dads for Father's Day today, ten children have what can only be called an iron-clad excuse to not serve their dads breakfast in bed.

Reason? Their dads are in space.

All of the five male astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station have one or more children waiting for them at home.

Don't worry, though: NASA's given them plenty of ways to keep in touch with their families.

Aside from tried-and-true email -- updated for them by Mission Control -- the astronauts have access to an IP phone they can use whenever they have free time and communications satellite coverage.

Weekends, as it happens, are also the best time for earth-station teleconferences.

"The communication is really good," Chris Cassidy who left behind his wife and three children when he blasted off for the station in March. "In fact, I sometimes feel like I am more in touch with my family on the space station than when I was travelling back and forth to all the different training locations in the previous couple of years leading up to the flight."

Not that the astronauts' family affection is restricted only to Mother's and Father's Day.