Food in Space: What Do They Eat?

By Bushra and Ctsma

• Important – understanding and preventing the negative changes that occur during space flight

• NASA spend a lot of time because good nutrition may be one way to help keep astronauts healthy during space flight

• Space food is a unique branch of food and nutrition science.

• It is far more than just selecting tasty and healthy things to eat. It is also about packaging, preparation, consumption, and disposal.

• The primary driving force behind space food development is weight and volume. The less the total payload carried by a rocket weighs, including the weight of the astronauts, the less thrust the rocket has to generate to reach space

Food in Space Flight

MERCURY

• United States’s first space program that sent humans to space.

• The astronauts were launched into space Redstone/Atlas rocket.

• Short duration - complete meals were not needed.

• The major meal was consumed prior to the flight.

• However, the Mercury astronauts did contribute to the development of space food.

• Tested the physiology of chewing, drinking, and swallowing solid and liquid foods in a microgravity environment.

• Eating in bite-sized cubes, freeze-dried foods, and semi-liquids in aluminum toothpaste-type tubes.

• Unappetizing, and there were problems when they tried to rehydrate the freeze-dried foods.

GEMINI

• NASA one step closer to going to the moon

• Include 2-person missions

• Major advancements - food used better than the original items developed for Mercury Project

• Cinnamon Toasted Bread, Shrimp Cocktail, Chicken & Vegetables, Pudding & Apple Sauce.

• Included dehydrated juices, freeze-dried and dehydrated foods, and compressed, noncrumbling, bite- sized foods.

• 3 meals a day, were planned in advance and the menu was repeated every 4 days.

APOLLO

• Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon.

• Neil Armstrong among the astronauts. (1st American walked on the moon!)

• Mercury and Gemini missions provided valuable experience for the further development of space foods for future space flights.

• The first to have hot water in space, so the variety of space foods increased even more.

• Similar with Gemini, but the variety of foods was considerably greater.

• Could see and smell what they were eating as well as eat with a spoon for the first time in space.

• Gives enjoyment to the meals, which was missing in the earlier packages and products

• Coffee, bacon squares, cornflakes, scrambled eggs, cheese crackers, beef sandwiches, chocolate pudding, tuna salad, peanut butter, beef pot roast, spaghetti, and frankfurters.

• Fruit juices were also added to the menu.

SKYLAB

• The first space station built by the US.

• Goals – to prove that humans could live in space for long periods of time

• Dining experience on Skylab was unlike any other space flight.

• The Skylab laboratory had a dining room, and a table.

• Had one of the best space food system.

• Warming trays, refrigerator and freezer were also available for storing food.

• Menu could be more extensive.

• Skylab astronauts could choose from 72 different food items, including steak and vanilla ice-cream.

• Eating a meal on Skylab was more like eating a meal at home.

• Major difference - the microgravity environment.

• Supply of food sufficient to feed 3 astronauts for approximately 112 days.

• Menu was designed to meet each individual astronaut s daily nutritional requirements based on age, body weight, and activity.

APOLLO SOYUZ TEST PROJECT

• First joint space program of the U.S. and Russia, and resulted in one mission.

• The mission was 9 days

• U.S. Apollo spacecraft launched from the U.S. and docked (that is, connected) with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that had launched from Russia.

• Engineers had to design a special docking module that would fit onto both spacecrafts .

• Photos of this event are unavailable, as there was no third spaceship to take the picture from!

• American - meals similar to those consumed on Apollo and Skylab flights.

• Russian - meals were composed of foods packaged in metal cans and aluminum tubes.

• Their spacecraft had a small heating unit onboard, and individual menus were selected for each cosmonaut.

• Meal consisted of meat or meat paste, bread, cheese, soup,

dried fruit and nuts, coffee, and cake.

SPACE SHUTTLE

• Space Shuttle was the world’s first reusable spacecraft.

• Shuttle missions were 5 to 16 days long, and had as many as 8 crew members.

•

• The part of the Space Shuttle that had wings was called the “orbiter.”

• Inside the orbiter was the crew compartment (that is, the place where the crew members worked, ate, and slept).

• The crew compartment had 2 levels: the flight deck and the mid-deck (or middle deck).

• The flight deck was “upstairs,” and was where the commander and pilot (and 2 other astronauts) sat and controlled the flight, and could see out the windows.

• The mid-deck was “downstairs,” and was where most experiments were conducted, where the “kitchen” was, and where the bathroom was.

• More Earth-like feeding approach was designed by updating previous food package designs and hardware items.

• Food variety expanded to 74 different kinds of food and 20 kinds of beverages.

• Food is prepared at a galley installed in the orbiter’s middeck.

• Contains a water dispenser and an oven.

• The water dispenser which can dispense hot, chilled, or ambient water is used for rehydrating foods, and the galley oven is used to warm foods to the proper serving temperature.

• The oven is a forced-air convection oven and heats food in containers different in size, shape, and material.

• A full meal for a crew of four can be set up in about 5 minutes.

• Reconstituting and heating the food takes an additional 20—30 minutes.

• A meal tray is used as a dinner plate.

• The tray attaches to the astronaut s lap by a strap or can be attached to the wall. Eating utensils consist of a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a pair of scissors to open food packages.

• Many astronauts will tell you that one of the most important things they carry in their pockets is a pair of scissors.

• They could not eat without them!

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

• The International Space Station (ISS) is a giant environment for living and working in space.

• The ISS crews are international as well.

• Six crew members live on the ISS, and they come from the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, and Europe.

• U.S. and its IPs make new foods to try to increase the variety of foods available to crew members.

• Similar to the Space Shuttle, the ISS beverage package is made from a foil and plastic laminate to provide for a longer product shelf life.

• The food package is made from a microwaveable material.

• The top of the package is cut off with a pair of scissors, and the contents are eaten with a fork or spoon.

Types of Space Food

Rehydratable Food

• include both foods and beverages. Water is removed during Earth processing, making it easy to stow the foods and extend the shelf life. During flight, water is added back to the food.

• include chicken consomme´, cream of mushroom soup,

macaroni and cheese, chicken and rice casseroles, shrimp cocktail, and various breakfast foods.

Thermostabilized Food

• refers to canned food. The foods are heat-processed to destroy deleterious microorganisms and enzymes.

• Most of the fish, such as tuna and salmon, and fruit are carried into space in thermostabilized cans or pouches. The cans open with full-panel pull-out lids.

Intermediate Moisture Food • preserved by taking some water out of the

product while leaving enough in to maintain the soft texture. This way, it can be eaten without any preparation.

• These foods include dried peaches, pears, apricots, and beef jerky.

Natural Form Foods • Nuts, granola bars, M&MsTM, and cookies are

classified as natural form foods. They are packaged ready to eat in flexible pouches.

Condiments • Condiments include commercially packaged individual

pouches of catsup, mustard, mayonnaise, taco sauce, and hot pepper sauce.

Irradiated Meat

• includes beefsteak, fajitas, breakfast sausage, and smoked turkey. To insure long shelf life at the ambient temperatures found inside the spacecraft, the meat is cooked, packaged in flexible foil-laminated retort pouches, and sterilized by zapping it with ionizing radiation

Breakfast Foods

SS Scramble Egg

Bacon Bars

Breakfast Cereal

Snacks and Appetizers

• SS Shrimp Cocktail

• Skylab Butter Cookies

• Jan Davis’s Hot Clam-cheese Dip

Soups and Salads

• SS Chicken Noodle Soup

• SS Citrus Salad

• SS Peach Ambrosia

• SS Tomato Basil Soup

Bread, Tortillas & Sandwiches

• Tortilla Roll-Up

• Frozen Space Sandwich

Main Dishes

• SS Meatloaf

• SS Chicken-Pineapple Salad

• Rachael Ray’s Swedish Meatballs

Vegetables

• SS Asparagus

• SS Black Beans

• SS Corn

• SS Potato Medley

Desserts

• SS Bread Pudding

• SS Chocolate Pudding Cake

• Mildred Bondar’s (Astronaut Roberta Bondar’s Mother) Dream Cake

Beverages

• SS Orange Grapefruit Drink

• SS Mango-peach Smoothie

• SS Chocolate Instant Breakfast

Challenges

Microgravity

• which gravity s effects are greatly reduced and occurs when a spacecraft orbits Earth

• spacecraft and all its contents are in a state of free-fall

• foods are packaged and served to prevent food from moving about the Space Shuttle or ISS.

• Crumbs and liquids could damage equipment or be inhaled

• Special straws are used for drinking the liquids. have clamps that can be closed to prevent the liquids from creeping out

• also causes the utensils used for dining to float away. The knife, fork, spoon, and scissors are secured to magnets on the food tray when they are not being used

• measuring cups don’t work very well. If you were to squirt water from a hose into the cup, you would need to do it very slowly.

• Sedimentation and buoyancy are absent.

• Heating water to boiling creates gas bubbles, as it does on Earth, but in microgravity bubbles do not rise to the top of the pot. They stay right where they form.

• In short, microgravity creates challenges for food preparation.