First Space Baked Cookies
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Luca Parmitano, an Italian
astronaut, was the master baker in December 2019 telecasting the complete
description of the baked cookies which he has made them one by one in the
prototype Zero-G Oven.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule is back home now on Jan 13, 2020. The first
food which was baked in space (a batch of cookies) has landed back on Earth.
First Space Baked Cookies
The first space cookies began their
journey as chocolate chip cookie dough that launched alongside the Zero-G oven,
the first oven designed to work in the microgravity environment aboard the
International Space Station (ISS). The cookie dough and oven launched to the
station in November on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft and returned Jan. 7
on the SpaceX Dragon.
Just in time for Christmas, the
astronauts aboard the space station baked the pre-made dough (which was
provided by the hotel chain DoubleTree) one cookie at a time in their Zero-G
oven, making five cookies total, a DoubleTree representative confirmed to
Space.com in an email.
Five DoubleTree by Hilton chocolate
chip cookies were baked in space and the cookies were set to come back down to
Earth via the SpaceX Dragon return. The astronauts made space cookies and milk
for Santa this year 2019, NASA astronaut Christina Koch tweeted from the space
station last month as she posed with one of the baked cookies, which were
wrapped up.
People were enthusiastic to know, if the space station would
smell like fresh-baked cookies and how the pastries would look like, if they
were puffy, spherical etc.
From the image Koch shared on
twitter, it’s tough to tell exactly what shape the dough took once it was baked
in space, but it does seem to have a unique shape. More information about the
cookies will be explained after they are analyzed following their return to
Earth.
Once they get confirmation that the cookies have indeed arrived
safely home, then they will share full details, as well as a video and photos
of the cookies being baked on the ISS,” the DoubleTree cookies.
But finally the first
chocolate chip cookie baked in space were successfully made.
While looking more or less normal,
the best cookies required two hours of baking time last month up at the
International Space Station. It takes far less time on Earth, under 20 minutes.
This was the first
food baked in space lab, which is 248 miles from Earth.
And how do they taste? No one knows.
Still sealed in individual baking pouches and packed in their spaceflight
container, the cookies remain frozen in a Houston-area lab after splashing down
two weeks ago in a SpaceX capsule. They were the first food baked in space from
raw ingredients.
The small electric test oven that
was launched to the space station last November was designed and built near
Nasa’s Johnson Space Center, Nanoracks. Five frozen raw cookies were
already up there.
The first space baked cookies kept
for 25 minutes in the oven for at 300F (149C) – ended up seriously under-baked.
Then doubled the baking time for the next two and the results were still so-so.
The fourth cookie stayed in the oven for two hours, and finally got the success.
After 2 hours some browning could be
seen said by Parmitano. But they can’t tell if it’s cooked all the way or not,
but it certainly doesn’t look like cookie dough anymore.” Parmitano kept the
oven up to its maximum 325F (163C) for the fifth cookie and baked it for 130
minutes. He reported more success.
Additional testing will be done with
respect to its taste once they return back home.
The astronauts could smell the
cookies when they removed them from the oven, except for the first and felt a
pleasant aroma.
According to Mike Massimino, a
former Nasa astronaut said that’s the beauty of baking in space. He now
educates at Columbia University and is a paid spokesman for DoubleTree by
Hilton. The hotel chain provided the cookie dough, the same kind used for
cookies offered to hotel guests. It’s offering one of the space-baked cookies
to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum for display.
Now NASA has
released the complete video of first space baked cookies on January 23, 2020.
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