The International Space Station completed 20 years of service and to celebrate this anniversary, the NASA did a short culinary history of the space race.
The first human in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, was also the first to eat in orbit. On April 12, 1961, he squeezed meat and liver paste from an aluminum tube into his mouth, as he gazed at Earth while sitting in his Vostok capsule. For dessert, he was entitled to a chocolate sauce, also in a tube.
Meanwhile, astronaut John Glenn was the first American to eat in space: his plate, apple sauce that he squeezed from a toothpaste-like bottle.
“Although the meals were not particularly appetizing, these early experiences showed that humans could eat and swallow in the absence of gravity without suffering ill effects,” NASA noted.
In 1965, freeze-dried or dehydrated foods were introduced with the Gemini program. The astronauts had to use the spacecraft’s water supply to reconstitute those foods before eating them.
We’ve all got to eat! That includes astronauts on the @space_station.
For the #spacestation20th anniversary of continuous human presence, take a look back at some of the meals that have been shared in microgravity from all around the world. https://t.co/zQMJbCAtyD pic.twitter.com/gzn3lz6q9l
— Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) August 14, 2020
During the Apollo missions to the Moon, the space menu expanded: astronauts could choose from about 70 items, from entrees to entrees, condiments and drinks. Plaatos were also created that could be eaten with a spoon, rather than being sucked out of a tube.
The danger of eating bread in space
Sandwiches were also tested during the Apollo missions, but the results were not very encouraging. The bread did not stay very fresh and left crumbs that floated in the cabin and could damage equipment or even get into the astronauts’ eyes or lungs.
In the 1970s, a freezer was incorporated on board Skylab, the first space station in the United States. About 15% of the food supply was frozen, said Charles Bourland, who developed most of the program. This allowed the astronauts to indulge in some treats, such as lobster, ice cream, and other cold treats. The rest of the meals were stored in cans to give them a longer shelf life.
In 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz Project, American astronauts first tested the space food Russian. Much of the food aboard the Soviet Soyuz was packaged in tubes, and Commander Aleksei Leonov pranked astronauts Thomas Stafford and Donald Slayton by replacing the labels on the beet soup tubes with famous vodka labels.
With the arrival of the space shuttle in 1981, the kitchen used to rehydrate and reheat food made the astronauts’ meals tastier and more varied. In addition, a small container with fresh food was added for immediate consumption.
The main module of the Russian Mir space station included a dining table with the ability to reheat food in cans and tubes. The cosmonauts used a hot and cold water dispenser to rehydrate foods such as juices and soups. Over the course of its 15-year lifespan, some cargo resupply vehicles brought food to the station, including fresh fruits and vegetables that were always welcome.
The variety of Russian dishes was regularly supplemented by specialties brought in by crew from other nations. The first French citizen to visit Mir, the astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, brought for example pate, cheeses and chocolate.
During the Shuttle-Mir program, the American astronauts residing aboard Mir first ate mostly Russian food, but on later missions they also brought American food, such as astronaut Shannon M. Lucid’s favorite jelly, which became the dessert of Sundays.
1985: the Mexican tortilla revolutionizes space gastronomy
In 1985, at the urging of Rodolfo Neri Vela, the first Mexican astronaut to go to space, Mexican tortillas were included on the menu.
The astronauts noted that tortillas, unlike bread, did not create crumbs and could be used to make sandwiches or contain other foods. Since then, Mexican tortillas have become a classic in space and are used by members of the International Space Station to make burritos as well as hamburgers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
2001: the odyssey of the first pizza
It took until 2001 for one of the world’s most popular dishes to hit space: pizza. It was through a commercial agreement between the Pizza Hut company and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos
Commander Yuri V. Usachev filmed himself reheating and eating a slice of pizza with salami as the plate rotated and floated before his eyes.
The pizzas returned to space in 2017 at the request of astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who said he missed them too much. Since the war they have been sent everything to prepare them in the ISS.
That same year, Frenchman Thomas Pesquet was entitled to a delivery of raspberry macarons to celebrate his 39th birthday. According to what pastry chef Pierre Hermé told then, he had to refine his recipe for a year to meet the requirements of NASA and the French space agency, such as that it can be swallowed in one go to avoid dangerous crumbs.
Vegetables: a challenge of galactic proportions
However, the most difficult foods to provide to ISS crew members, and the ones they seek the most, are fresh fruits and vegetables. Their short shelf life and lack of dedicated refrigeration in the ISS for food make them a rare commodity in orbit.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg G. Artemev found a solution: he brought carefully wrapped onions and cut off the sprouts to flavor his dishes.
A third possibility, which has so far only been tested in a very limited and experimental way, is to grow vegetables aboard the ISS. In 2013, Expedition 44 flight engineers Kimiya Yui, Kjell N. Lindgren and Scott J. Kelly tested a red romaine lettuce grown in the Veggie apparatus and declared it to be “delicious.”
Currently, the Space Food Systems Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is responsible for the preparation and packaging of food to be shipped to the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts can choose from 200 different foods. All food in the EEI is stored at room temperature and must be stable under these conditions.
Food packaged at Johnson Space Center is shipped to three different launch sites for loading into ISS refueling vehicles: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for launch aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon, to Port Atlantic regional spacecraft in Virginia for loading onto the Cygnus spacecraft, or to the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan from where the HTVs are launched.
With information from TN.com
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