It also also managed to improve the culinary experience for astronauts. While today's astronauts still eat packaged meals, their food has a lot more variety and flavor than what Armstrong and Aldrin ate in The first person to eat in outer space and the first human to venture there was Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, who orbited earth on board the Vostok 1 in April Gagarin ate beef and liver paste squeezed from a tube, followed by chocolate sauce for dessert.
Glenn's meal on board Friendship 7 in February was similarly unappetizing. The astronaut consumed applesauce and pureed beef and vegetables from a toothpaste-like tube.
He also drank xylose sugar tablets dissolved in water. The artificial drink Tang wasn't very popular when it was released in , but it turned out to be the ideal formula for astronauts since it could be mixed with water. Starting in the s, the drink became so popular on NASA flights, it generated a myth that the product was developed for space.
Though John Glenn brought the drink along on his flight , the astronaut later admitted he didn't enjoy it very much. But Tang in space doesn't look the same as Tang on the ground. It's sealed in a pouch that astronauts inject with water using a needle. They then sip the mixture — which is labeled "orange drink" or "peach mango drink" instead of Tang — through a straw. NASA's Gemini program conducted its first manned flight in In preparation for that launch, NASA began dehydrating food and sealing it in plastic bags.
The bags were labeled with instructions on how to rehydrate the food in space using water. Food items prepared for Gemini astronauts included scrambled eggs, shrimp with cocktail sauce, curried chicken, and raisin rice pudding. Drinks included coffee, grape juice, and milk.
Since weightless astronauts exerted less energy in space, meals contained fewer calories compared to what the astronauts were used to eating on earth. To satisfy their sweet tooth, Gemini astronauts were given cubed sugar cookies designed to be eaten in a single bite. The cookies were coated in gelatin to prevent crumbs, which could clog electrical systems or air filters. Astronaut Virgil Grissom learned this firsthand when he tried to eat a regular corned beef sandwich on rye during a Gemini mission.
Jeff Bezos unveils his big plans for the moon. In fact, that "space ice cream" never made its way into space. NASA deemed it too crumbly, a problem to think about when developing food to eat in space as rogue crumbs can cause serious consequences in zero gravity, also called microgravity.
It took 12 years after the first bite was ever consumed in space for ice cream to make its debut in microgravity, according to NASA. The history of space food has been a long and appetizing road. In the beginning. With the challenge of developing food to eat in microgravity, scientists were faced with basic questions such as could food be digested easily? Or how would it react to extreme pressure and vibrations during launch? Read More. A strict checklist was followed.
Food must be crumble-free, lightweight, easy to prepare and consume, long-lasting with no need for refrigeration and nutritious enough to sustain an astronaut throughout their space duties. The first meal eaten in space was in the spring of by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. He had pureed meat in a squeezable toothpaste-style tube, followed by a tube of chocolate sauce.
Glenn and his fellow Mercury astronauts were among the first to test the physiology of eating in microgravity environments. For these experiments, they were given food in fairly unrecognizable forms. In addition to semi-liquids in tubes, NASA offered crushed cornflakes and crushed wheat molded into bite-sized cubes which were then coated in gelatin so they didn't crumble. They also took vacuum packed freeze-dried foods. The process of freeze-drying food retained its nutritional value, required no refrigeration and resulted in it being incredibly light and compact.
However, rehydrating the food packages was a cumbersome process in microgravity. Water was injected through a nozzle, the pack was kneaded to reconstitute the food then squeezed directly into the mouth through an opening.
After consumption, germicidal tablets were put inside the empty pack to discourage microbial growth, the agency said. During his hour Mercury mission, the longest of its kind at the time, astronaut Gordon Cooper ate a meal of dehydrated shrimp, potato salad and apple juice. At his post-flight press conference , Cooper remarked: "I think the food I had along was adequate, although it was so much work to get to some of it here, that I tended to just perhaps not eat as much as I should have.
Pastes in tubes and bite-sized cubes from the Mercury and Gemini missions in By the mids missions were longer, up to two weeks, and eating was less experimental and more for nutritional sustenance. At the same time provisions had to be made with smaller weight and mass constraints. Out of this world. By the time man had made it to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in , eating in space had made its own giant leaps. As reported by the National Air and Space Museum , rations were increased to 2, calories per day and hot water dispensers were installed so meals no longer had to be room temperature.
Gone were the days of squeezing pastes from a tube; improved packaging reduced meal preparation and consumption time. Also a new form of food was introduced known as "wetpacks. Wetpacks quickly gained crews approval which was enough for NASA to justify the additional weight resource. They even let astronauts eat with a spoon. Wetpack foods were appealing as they more closely resembled the consistency of regular food albeit a bit stickier so that food held together better without bits floating off.
Among the wetpack foods eaten by the Apollo 11 astronauts were spaghetti with meat sauce, sausage patties and chicken stew, according to NASA. Another type of thermostabilized container was offered: a can with a ring pull lid, although these canned products weighed approximately four times that of freeze-dried foods. The astronauts were able to choose from a wider variety of foods, including shrimp cocktails, turkey bites, cream of chicken soup and butterscotch pudding.
The food was freeze-dried , meaning that it was cooked, quickly frozen and then put in a vacuum chamber to remove the water.
Freeze-drying preserved the food for the flight without compromising the flavor. To rehydrate the food, the astronauts simply injected water into the package with a water gun.
For the Apollo program -- the first to land men on the moon -- NASA provided its astronauts with hot water, which made rehydrating foods easier. The Apollo astronauts were also the first to have utensils and no longer had to squeeze food into their mouths. The mission introduced the spoon bowl , a plastic container with dehydrated food inside. After the astronauts injected water into the bowl to rehydrate the food, they opened a zipper and ate the food with a spoon.
The wetness of the food made it cling to the spoon instead of floating away. The Apollo mission also introduced thermostabilized pouches called wetpacks.
These flexible plastic or aluminum foil pouches kept food moist enough so that it didn't have to be rehydrated. Login Register Stay Curious Subscribe. The Sciences. John Glenn was the first American astronaut to eat food in space. Credit: NASA. Newsletter Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news.
Sign Up. This is what mealtime looked like for Mercury astronauts. Astronaut food included bite-sized cubes and dense purees packed into tubes. By Apollo 17, the menu available to astronauts had improved drastically. Above, the crew prepares to measure the height of wheat samples grown in orbit. NASA is slowly learning to produce small amounts of fresh food on the space station.
European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti drinks the first espresso ever brewed in space. The orbiting espresso machine used, dubbed ISSpresso, was developed by an Italian aerospace company and famed coffee maker Lavazza.
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