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Oct 8, 2009 Tortillas taste great in zero gravity By Raja Murthy "How can you prepare food when you cannot put anything down? And I mean, anything, no mixing bowl (things would float out), no cutting things on the table (they would float away), and no setting tools down easily in between steps. Also water likes to stick to everything." - American astronaut Sandra Magnus, Expedition 2 flight engineer, on her pioneering culinary adventures aboard Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station. MUMBAI - While India's Chandrayaan-1 finding water traces on the moon [1] keeps afloat space travel hopes, food to feed travelers outside Earth speedily heads towards Space Family Robinson comfort zones, thanks to space food scientists in the United States, Russia, Europe, China, Japan and India. Furthering this evolution towards home-keepers beyond Earth, American astronaut Sandra Magnus has unofficially become the world's first space chef, with her zero-gravity cooking innovations aboard the International Space Station (ISS) this year. The "Sandra Magnus Journal of Cooking and Dining in Space", which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made publicly available, has become the only first-hand report of challenges and trials astronauts face in having a routine daily meal 350 kilometers above Earth. NASA officials add that what astronauts eat is one of the most frequently asked questions from the curious public. Food, astronaut Magnus also admits, continues to be a popular talking point during life in orbit. What exactly do Magnus and company eat in space? And is it true that tortillas are a big hit aboard the International Space Station? These are some of the questions Asia Times Online asked Dr Michele Perchonok, manager of the Shuttle Food System and the Advanced Food Technology project at NASA. Perchonok confirmed that tortillas are a favorite outer-space food, followed by coffee, shrimp cocktail, beef brisket and chocolate pudding cake. The humble tortilla defeats one of the greatest eating threats in space stations: food crumbs floating around and effecting sensitive instruments. Due to crumbs, hamburgers and pizzas are taboo outside Earth. "Pizza is difficult," says space food scientist Perchonok, dashing the hopes of classic Margherita lovers. "Foods in space have to be stored at room temperature. It's difficult when you have too many components, like a pizza - where you have the crust and sauce and the cheese. Each component requires different processing conditions." As the NASA space food system manager since year 2000, Perchonok's mission is to ensure tasty and healthy meals for crews that float in orbit anywhere from 11 days to many months. Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams, for example, spent six months in the International Space Station in 2006, the longest any woman has lived outside Earth. The six astronauts currently living aboard the ISS eat in relatively greater comfort and variety than space travel pioneers in Mercury and Gemini spacecraft four decades ago. John Glenn, aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6 Mission in 1962, crunched freeze-dried snacks and endured stew and applesauce squeezed out of toothpaste tube-like aluminum containers. Squeeze too hard and the food floats away. American, Russian, Japanese and Chinese astronauts, particularly aboard the ISS and NASA space shuttles, have about 200 different food types from which to choose, including treats like plum-cherry cobbler, honey cake, berry medley and chocolate breakfast drink. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) added to this mix last year, certifying 29 Japanese food products from 12 manufacturers as official Japanese space food. Japanese astronauts dine on a variety that includes the "Onishi" category food of white rice, rice with red azuki beans and wild greens; the "Kagome" type, including tomato ketchup, vegetable sauce, vegetable jelly drink of tomato or carrot, and "Kewpie" of mayonnaise or rice porridge. Japanese noodles, salmon and steamed rice with chopsticks were a big hit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour last year, as station commander Peggy Whitson told the then-Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda in March 2008, after veteran Japanese astronaut Takao Doi joined them in space. China has created its own space food, including moon cakes, chocolates and desserts that have also been sold in Chinese supermarkets since 2008. The Scientific Research and Training Center for Chinese Astronauts has developed 60 space dishes since 2006 for taikonauts, as China calls its space travelers. India's 47-year-old Defense Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) is an old hand. It won an Indian governmental "Titanium Trophy" in 1983 as the "best science laboratory for development of foods particularly for service forces, Antarctica expeditions and for outer space missions". The Mysore-based DFRL currently has food scientists, biochemists and microbiologists working for India's first manned space mission scheduled for 2015. The extra-terrestrial menu would include curries and upma, a popular south Indian breakfast dish made of lightly spiced semolina. Yet the 21st-century variety of space menus does not ease difficulties of eating in zero gravity. "No matter what the food, you still have the same problem eating it. You do not want it flying away from you and making a mess when you open it up [aboard the spacecraft]," says Magnus. "When you open the food package, you open only a small sliver, enough to get your spoon in," she warns in her space diary. "If you open too much, and there is not enough liquid in the package, out flies the food and you spend the rest of your mealtime chasing your meal around the cabin and making a mess. Bad space etiquette." >From less etiquette-mindful sailors chomping salted food in ancient voyages >across uncharted seas, food preservation has been the subject of study for >centuries. But the evolving work of food scientists like Perchonok assumes >more significance as leading space agencies aim at journeys lasting three to >five years outside Earth. Perchonok, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Brown University and a PhD in food science from Cornell, starts work on a space flight eight months before blast-off. She sits with the NASA crew to finalize personalized food menus at the Space Food Systems Laboratory, at Building 17 of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The multi-purpose Space Food Systems Laboratory comprises four units: a test kitchen fully equipped with sensory testing capabilities, a food processing laboratory, a food packaging laboratory and an analytical laboratory. Space food from such high-technology labs is shipped outside Earth packaged in different ways: dehydrated foods to which astronauts add water; in pouches that need warming; in cans, or eaten straight like fruit, biscuits and no-crumb crackers. Menus are similar for the ISS and space shuttle crews. "On the ISS, NASA only provides half the food. The Russians also provide the other half," Perchonok told Asia Times Online. "However, space shuttle crews pick their menus." The ISS has a standard menu, she said, but its longer-stay crew can request more of some items in their "preference" containers. These goodies hampers periodically reach the space station through space shuttles and more usually from a robot supply vessel launched from Kazakhstan that ferries food, water, fuel and other necessities to the ISS. Through a NASA source, Perchonok made available for Asia Times Online a standard daily menu at the International Space Station: Breakfast: Space shuttle commander Steve Lindsey's breakfast on Flight Day 2 on Mission STS 104: Granola with raisins (rehydratable) Breakfast roll (fresh food) Pears (thermostabilized) Vanilla breakfast drink (beverage) Kona coffee with cream (beverage) Earl Grey tea with sugar (fresh food) Lunch: Space shuttle pilot Pamela Melroy's lunch during her 10th day in space on Mission STS-92: Chicken strips in salsa Macaroni and cheese Rice with butter Macadamia nuts, apple cider Dinner: Expedition Three commander Frank Culbertson's dinner on Day 1, while on a eight-day rotation system for meals aboard the ISS: Shrimp cocktail (rehydratable) Beef steak (irradiated) Macaroni and cheese (rehydratable) Fruit cocktail (thermostabilized) Strawberry drink (beverage) Tea with lemon (beverage) Estimates of transporting these foodstuffs to space hovers around US$20,000 per meal per astronaut. Yet the extra-terrestrial foods research spins off multiple benefits on Earth. In the past three decades, major developments in preserved food packaging found on supermarket shelves to heat-and-eat nutritional food for the elderly, are direct results of space food research. Quality control to prevent food poisoning in space produced the widely used Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system. HACCP involves testing not only the final product, but also raw materials and the entire process in the food chain. "The HACCP process was developed by NASA, US Department of Defense and the Pillsbury company," says Perchonok, who had earlier worked at Quaker Oats and Lockheed. "This is now a standard in the food industry. The pouch retort product [NASA's thermostabilized items] are now used in the commercial market for rice, pasta, tuna, and salmon products, as examples." Space food evolution is further example that technological research rarely goes to waste and has - literally - down-to-earth uses. In the case of dining in the stars, the returns are assured even before the first human colonies outside Earth start cooking Sunday lunch. Note 1. Indian and American scientists discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon, after NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, instrument reported the observations. M3 was carried into space on October 22, 2008, aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Other NASA instruments, the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer or VIMS, and the High Resolution Infrared Imaging Spectrometer on NASA's Epoxi spacecraft, confirmed the finding of water molecules Hydroxyl in small amounts. Hydroxyl consists of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom. The findings were published in the journal Science in September 2009. (Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. 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