NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, together with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, are less than 24 hours away from flying to the moon.
The Artemis II mission is on target to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, April 1. Once NASA’s powerful SLS rocket has lifted the crew to space, they’ll spend about a day in Earth orbit checking the Orion spacecraft’s systems before changing trajectory and heading for the moon.
The mission doesn’t involve a lunar touchdown. Instead, the astronauts will fly around the moon before heading back home in a voyage expected to last about 10 days.
So, what kind of food will keep the crew fueled over the course of their epic trip?
The menu items are designed to support crew health and performance, and with no resupply or refrigeration, all of the food must be shelf-stable as well as easy to prepare and consume within the confines of the spacecraft.
“Food selections are developed in coordination with space food experts and the crew to balance calorie needs, hydration, and nutrient intake while accommodating individual crew preferences,” NASA said in a post about meals on the Artemis II mission.
Menu items include everything from tortillas, vegetable quiche, and mango salad, to nuts, macaroni and cheese, and tropical fruit salad. As they travel to and from the moon, the astronauts will also be able to enjoy things like granola with blueberries, barbecued beef brisket, and spicy green beans.
Drink options include coffee, green tea, mango-peach smoothie, lemonade, and cocoa. While it might feel appropriate to celebrate a lunar flyaround with a glass of champagne, no alcohol will be loaded onto the Orion.
The consumables are certainly a step up from what the last set of Apollo astronauts enjoyed — or endured — during their moon missions more than five decades ago.
Then, astronaut food was limited and often unappealing, comprising mainly bite-sized cubes, freeze-dried powders, and tube-packaged meals with little variety or texture. In contrast, the Artemis II crew members are benefitting from decades of advancements — thanks in part to experiences on the International Space Station — enabling them to enjoy food that’s both tastier and more nutritious.
NASA will use what it learns on the Artemis II mission to better understand how astronauts eat and manage food effectively in a small spacecraft, with the findings helping to guide preparations for future and much longer crewed missions to deep space.
Interested to watch a livestream of the Artemis II crew launching on their historic mission from Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday? Digital Trends has you covered.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.