A brand new SpaceX capsule has recently docked at the International Space Station, bringing international astronauts 6,400 pounds of equipment. It also brought something quite special — fresh, frozen ice cream.
Some candy retailers have had success selling Astronaut frozen ice cream, which are little freeze-dried packets of an ingredient that was widely believed to give space adventurers their sweet tooth fix up in space. But this is not the case, as not all of the food astronauts eat is actually freeze-dried and packaged in small containers. In fact, this freeze-dried variety was only brought to space once, on one Apollo mission 40 years ago.
NASA does put some thought into giving its astronauts a wide variety of fresh food, including turkey and cobbler for Thanksgiving. But real ice cream must be kept frozen at all times, and the International Space Station simply doesn’t have enough freezer space to accommodate these sweet desserts. Plus, NASA is trying to stay environmentally sound, and considering that 45% of consumers have purchased a product because the packaging was environmentally friendly, they’d like to cut down on paper and plastic waste while orbiting the Earth.
So this is where the SpaceX capsule comes in handy. While science experiments, blood and urine samples, and 20 live mice took up the majority of the cargo, NASA officials decided to take advantage of the leftover freezer space and treat the astronauts to a surprise. They packed 30 individual cups of Bluebell vanilla, chocolate, and birthday cake ice cream, along with Snickers ice cream bars.
There’s a catch though: the SpaceX capsule is set to return to Earth within a few weeks — live mice included! — and the freezer space must be emptied in time. So the astronauts will have to eat all the ice cream within a week or two, a challenge NASA is sure they’ll be able to achieve.
NASA decided to send some ice cream simply because the SpaceX capsule is one of the first temperature-controlled capsules to actually accommodate food at an ambient temperature. Usually, before the capsule leaves Earth the astronauts are able to request from NASA some fresh food to come with their package, but this time the crew members didn’t ask for anything special at all.
“We were like, this is crazy. We’re not going to send a fresh-food kit without putting something fresh in there,” manager of NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory Vickie Kloeris explained to NPR. “On the shuttle flights, because they were short, the food was just not all that important. Most of [the astronauts] took the attitude, ‘Oh, it’s a two-week camping trip, I’ll find something,’ ” Kloeris added.
She did note that the crew asked for reinforcements like extra coffee and condiments, but NASA tossed in a few extra avocados and apples to the capsule.
Back during the days of the Space Shuttle, each astronaut was able to pick their own food to travel with them. But since there are so many crew members at a time on the ISS, this became a logistical disaster, Kloeris said. So she created a new standardized menu that is shipped to crew members almost immediately after they take off, but anything frozen is off the menu.
Until now. The average American will consume ice cream over 28 times each year. And now with help of the flying freezer SpaceX, astronauts are included in that tally.
