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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Zero G Kitchen

Astronauts Bake Cookies with Zero G Kitchen’s Space Oven

Making cookies in space is definitely not an E-Z bake. But thanks to a special space oven from Zero G Kitchen and Nanoracks, astronauts aboard the International Space Station were able to get into the holiday spirit yesterday by making cookies… they just couldn’t eat them (h/t to The Verge).

On Twitter yesterday morning, astronaut Christina H. Koch posted a picture of herself along with fellow ISS resident Luca Parmitano and a fresh baked cookie still in its space age baking container.

The cookies, however, can’t be eaten. Since the oven is still very experimental, astronauts aren’t going to risk eating improperly cooked food while floating around in space. Instead, the cookies have been frozen and will be sent back down to earth for analysis.

Zero G’s space oven is pretty cool. As we wrote back in November when the oven was launched into space:

The new oven, which was built through a collaboration between Zero G Kitchen and Nanoracks, is actually quite fascinating. It’s a cylindrical chamber, and food is held in special silicone trays with 40 micron filters that allow heat and steam to escape and are held in aluminum frames so they can be securely racked.

This isn’t the first time that the oven has been used. The Verge reports that a number of cookie batches were made aboard the ISS this month to varying degrees of at least visual success.

Fresh-baked cookies aren’t the only creature comfort aboard the ISS that the astronauts can’t enjoy. Wine was also shot to the ISS aboard the same ship that brought the oven. But that’s just aging in space for 12 months before being returned to Earth, unopened.

The Space Station Just Got More Fun with the Arrival of Wine and a Cookie Baking Oven

If you’re looking for literal high-end food, space is evidently the place as two different delectable payloads shot up to the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend. A Cygnus rocket launched on November 2 and successfully docked with ISS today carrying a bottle of wine from Europe and a cookie-baking oven from the U.S., all in the name of (delicious) science.

TechCrunch reports that like a celestial sommelier, the French startup Space Cargo Unlimited sent a samples of red wine to the space station. Sadly, astronauts won’t be able to enjoy this astro wine, but instead just have to keep it up in space for 12 months before it’s sent back down to Earth. According to Quartz, this space faring wine mission is formally called “Mission WISE, for Vitis Vinum in Spatium Experimentia” and will study how exposure to space radiation and being in a state of constant free-fall impacts biological aging processes.

It might be a little on-the-nose that a French startup sends up wine while an American company figures out how to bake chocolate chip cookies in space, but here we are.

Space.com writes that typically on the space station, food is heated or reheated via hot water. The new oven, which was built through a collaboration between Zero G Kitchen and Nanoracks, is actually quite fascinating. It’s a cylindrical chamber, and food is held in special silicone trays with 40 micron filters that allow heat and steam to escape and are held in aluminum frames so they can be securely racked. It’s quite complicated, and I recommend reading all the details on Zero G’s site.

As rich entrepreneurs like Elon Musk with his SpaceX and Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin push space flight with an eye towards traveling to Mars, there are a number of startups shooting for the culinary stars. Last month, Aleph Farms said it had grown small scale cell cultured muscle tissue aboard the ISS. Space Roasters wants to roast coffee beans using the heat of re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and Australian company Vostok Space Beer is creating, well, beer that can be imbibed in space.

Operating on a much bigger scale is a company like Japan’s Space Food X, which is a consortium of 30 technology and food companies as well as universities and investment firms, all working to figure out the daunting task of food production in space.

One thing’s for sure, any space-faring journey to Mars is going to require meals paired with more than a few bottles of Pinot to help pass the time.