Forget all the science stuff. We want to know what the Artemis II crew eats!
Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft circled the moon and is headed back to Earth, capping an exhilarating mission that saw its four crew members become record holders for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
Space travel as a concept can be a little overwhelming, so what many of us key in on are the logistical issues. How do astronauts eat? How do they go to the bathroom? Do they really drink Tang? (If that’s a little before your time, pause for a mini history lesson: Tang is basically powdered orange Gatorade, and … astronauts really drank it!)
We can’t answer all of the existential questions you might have about, say, life on other planets or what’s really going on at Area 51, but we can give you all the details of what the Artemis II crew ate on NASA’s return to the (neighborhood of) the moon after more than 50 years. Read on for all the delicious (and slightly creepy) details.
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What do astronauts eat in space?
All kinds of things! Hot coffee, cold mango salad and everything in between—including a strangely specific number of tortillas (58). The Orion is stocked with 189 different foods and drinks for the 10-day mission, and you know, that’s not bad. When’s the last time your fridge offered so much variety?
But there’s no refrigerator on Orion. All menu items must be shelf-stable. Some things are freeze-dried and rehydratable, like macaroni and cheese and shrimp curry with rice; other stuff is ready-to-eat, like granola, cookies and nuts. Heat-stabilized foods, including the salmon bites favored by Artemis crew member Jeremy Hansen, and irradiated foods (which are exposed to safe radiation to improve food safety and shelf life), like barbecue beef brisket, are also on board.
Astronauts can choose from more than 10 different drinks, including coffee (43 cups, to be exact), green tea, cocoa, lemonade, a mango-peach smoothie and three flavors of breakfast drink. Condiments are plentiful because, as it turns out, astronauts tend to get congested in space and have trouble tasting foods—which is probably why they have five different kinds of hot sauce to go with those tortillas.
How do astronauts prepare their meals?
It depends. Freeze-dried foods and drinks, which come in vacuum-sealed plastic pouches, must be rehydrated through a little port on the side of the pouch. These days, astronauts can add hot or cold water from the ship’s potable water system, which is a significant improvement over early space missions, when it was cold water or nothing.
Some foods, like tortillas and nuts, need no preparation, but other ready-to-eat foods, as well as heat-stabilized and irradiated items, typically come in flexible metallic pouches that can be heated in a special warmer if needed. About the size of a briefcase, the warmer plugs into the spacecraft’s power system and zaps (not the technical term) the food to serving temp.
Once their food is ready, astronauts use scissors to cut open the pouches and dig right in with a spoon or use a specialized tube to squeeze the food directly into their mouths. Drinks, of course, must be slurped through a straw to keep them from floating away!
How does NASA come up with a menu for the crew?
Carefully. The Orion has only so much room, so a major consideration when packing for space is mass, weight and volume. Foods must also be nutritionally sound, safe to store and transport and—this is a big one—things the astronauts actually like to eat. Every crew member gets to sample and rank foods before the flight, and their preferences are taken into consideration when the final menu is determined.
Astronauts have access to fresh water and are allotted two non-water drink choices per day. That’s good because space travel is dehydrating, and space food, particularly the heat-stabilized stuff, is high in sodium, which can contribute to bone loss in microgravity.
Finally: No crumbs allowed! Pilot John W. Young, sick of bland, rehydrated fare, smuggled a corned beef sandwich onboard the Gemini III flight in 1965. It did not go well. Although he and Gus Grissom gobbled it up, the rye bread disintegrated into floating crumbs, which could have harmed the ship’s instruments. The transgression caused a congressional incident, and it underscores another important menu consideration: whether the astronauts can easily and safely eat the food in microgravity.
When do the astronauts eat?
Artemis astronauts eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at specific scheduled times, except on launch and reentry days, when the crew works meals around the operational schedule of the spacecraft. Since the ship’s potable water system is turned off during these phases of the flight, food choices are limited to ready-to-eat options.
Is this what Apollo astronauts ate?
Not exactly, but many innovations developed during the Apollo missions, which flew between 1961 and 1972, are still in use today. The majority of the Apollo foods were freeze-dried and rehydratable (and squeezed right into the mouth through a tube), though a few, like brownie bites and cereal cubes, could be eaten as-is.
In later missions, Apollo saw the development of the “spoonbowl” concept, in which astronauts opened the package and ate right from it, like a walking taco. And Apollo astronauts were part of a major leap forward in the availability of hot potable water for rehydrating. No more cold beef paste like those poor saps in the Gemini program!
But the Apollo astronauts have nothing on today’s Artemis II crew, starting with the briefcase-warmer: Adding hot water and mashing your food into a slurpable gruel is a far cry from popping some real mac and cheese into a bona fide microwave-type (again, not the scientific term!) contraption. Likewise, today’s astronauts have much more choice and variety: Apollo had about 70 core items to choose from, compared with the hundreds of options available today.
And not to start a turf war, but the inhabitants of the International Space Station (ISS) are really eating well. Because the ISS is resupplied periodically, crew members have even more categories of food they can enjoy, including fresh fruits and veggies, which must be eaten within a few days of arrival.
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Sources:
- YouTube: “NASA’s Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast)”
- NASA: “Artemis II: What’s on the Menu?”
- NASA: “Crew Systems”
- National Air and Space Museum: “Apollo Astronaut Life”
- NASA: “Food in Space”
- BBC: “Apollo in 50 numbers: Food”
- NASA: “International space station food systems”
- Government of Canada: “Eating in space”
- NASA: “Food on the International Space Station”
- NASA: “Fallout from the Unauthorized Gemini III Space Sandwich”
- NPR: “50 Years After Apollo 11, Here’s What (And How) Astronauts Are Eating”
