While many of us celebrated last week’s Thanksgiving holiday with delicious foods and other seasonal treats, did you and your kids ever stop to wonder about the foods astronauts might eat while celebrating holidays in space? When food is taken into space, there are various requirements it must meet in order for trips to space to remain as efficient as possible. Space programs like NASA must consider how foods are stored, their overall weight for takeoff preparations, packaging, shelf life, nutritional value, and most of all how they will handle in zero gravity situations.
In the early days of space exploration, extended trips included simple, specialized foods that were often consumed through straws or packaged in tube form. More recently food supplies to space have become more varied with the help of food handling techniques in dehydrating, freeze drying or thermostabilization. Generally, when processing meals for space travel, any excess moisture or lingering microorganisms that cause foods to spoil must be removed. Foods are then later re-hydrated in space where hot water is readily available. In certain cases, some ready to eat items like fruit or vegetables can even be stored and consumed without special processing.
Other advances in food for spaceflight include specialized packaging and coatings on items to help prevent crumbs or any food related debris from interfering with the functionality of a space orbiting shuttle. Additionally, meals are usually served on trays that are attached to the walls of the shuttle or fastened to their laps or tables. The specially packaged foods are then attached to the trays using systems with magnets or other fasteners and warmed through the injection of hot water for purposes of re-hydrating the packaged items.
These meals are specifically designed by dietitians that ensure that all proper nutritional requirements are being met for each astronaut. Depending on an astronaut’s country of origin, some space programs have even designed meals around culturally specific flavors or foods. Moreover, some special observances are made for holiday meals like the recent Thanksgiving celebration aboard the International Space Station, which included smoked turkey, corn bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, pie, and thermo stabilized yams.
Despite the many advances in food designed for space travel, there are still a few precautions in place to help assure that missions remain safe and efficient. If your family would take a trip to space, what foods would you and your kids hope to find? Are there any things or seasonal holiday treats that they might look for ? Let us know!
Filed under: Family Fun, Just for Fun, Newsletter | Tagged: International Space Station, Math Blaster, newsletter, space | 3 Comments »
