Astronauts in space still got a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving with cornbread stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, cherry blueberry cobbler, and of course turkey.
This year, astronauts won't be missing the thanksgiving feast, courtesy NASA, for having this done by modifying the recipe so it can be taken into the space. NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, commander of the space station's Expedition 34 mission will be accompanied by his Russian crewmates Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy.
"Thanksgiving is not a holiday that the Russians celebrate, but we have found that on orbit the crewmembers celebrate each others' holidays," said Vickie Kloeris, manager of the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to a report in Fox news. "They will take part in Kevin Ford's celebration of Thanksgiving, just as American crewmembers will take part in some of the Russian holidays."
The food items in its form cannot be carried unless it has undergone vetting process for a longer shelf life. Two types of space foods can be carried, one is freeze-dried which is ready just by adding water and other is thermostabilized which is packed in a pouch.
"When it goes through the thermostabilizing process, the chemistry of the food changes quite a bit," Kloeris said in a report published in Fox news. "Often what happens is we'll take a formulation and we'll try it afterwards, and it's like, 'No, that's not acceptable.'"
Since every food item has to be thermostabilized, but scientists need to ensure it still tastes good even after it is taken out in space.
Some food items change its taste and hence cannot be sent across. "We tried for a while to come up with thermostabilized cheesecake, and we just flat gave up on it," Kloeris said. "The color changes we got were just too severe. Not everything works."
Kloeris recalls an incident when freeze-dried ice cream was sent earlier on an Apollo mission on a crewmember's request. "It's more like hard cotton candy. Certainly if [astronauts] wanted to request that they could, but that's not something that adults want. Kids like it; they sell it at the gift shop," she told Fox news.
