Peanut butter, parmesan sent into space for astronauts
Source: AFP |
June 7, 2013, Friday
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Print Edition
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A SPECIAL delivery of peanut butter, pyjamas and parmesan cheese was blasted into the cosmos on Wednesday to bring some earthly indulgences to the astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The items were in a cargo capsule launched on the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket to bring creature comforts like family photos and sweet treats to the six-person crew, but also bare essentials like oxygen, food and drinking water.
Perhaps the most anticipated among the record 1,400 items launched on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) are the care packages put together for each of the astronauts with favorites they had requested and little surprises from home.
"It's quite small, but you can actually fit quite a lot in there," ATV cargo engineer Kerstin MacDonnell of the agency's ESTEC research centre said of the bread bin-sized container each crew member would receive.
"Some birthday cards or drawings from their children, or if one of them has a craving for chewing gum or beef jerky or whatever kind of thing they like," she said. "For the most part it's just comfort things that would help the morale - personal items and mementos from the family."
MacDonnell oversaw the loading of the ATV Albert Einstein, ESA's fourth and penultimate cargo freighter to the ISS, launched from Kourou in French Guiana. Also among the record dry cargo load of 2.5 tons were day-to-day necessities like printer paper, tools, toothbrushes and socks, and even a special diet put together by French-born chef Alain Ducasse for an experiment to test the minimum energy requirements of a human being in orbit. The total cargo weighs almost seven tons, and includes fuel for the ISS.
"We are looking forward to it because it carries experiments, a lot of personal stuff and all our food!" Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who arrived on the space station last week, said in a video shown at the launch control center in Kourou.
Cargo list
According to a cargo list, the crew will be dining for the next few months on everything from lasagna, beef stew, fajitas and broccoli gratin to waffles, dried fruit, scrambled eggs, strawberries and coffee - even cake icing in four different colors.
"They (the dieticians) try to make the food as tasty as possible and to have a variety," explained MacDonnell. "A lot of astronauts say that after six months in orbit they start... craving stronger tastes, they get bored of what they're eating. It's a huge part of morale."
Nearly all the food items were carefully dry-frozen, dehydrated or thermo-treated before being painstakingly packaged and then loaded onto the unmanned space freighter with military precision.
Just a handful of the items, like jelly beans, strawberry yoghurt and chocolate bars, travel in their original state.
Because of the weightless conditions in which they live, the astronauts have to eat most of their meals from a can or aluminium envelope with a fork or spoon or risk their lunch flying all over the place.
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