Space-baked cookies are up for grabs after testing astronauts patience

Here's good news for all the space travellers who are also cookie lovers as they are successfully baked in theinternational space station.The cookies took two hours to bake, which is approximately 10 times more than the time taken to prepare them on the Earth.

NASAastronautChristina Koch shared the news on Twitter.“We made space cookies and milk for Santa this year,” Koch tweeted.

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Interestingly, the bakers expected a different time in space but it was not that much different.

“There’s still a lot to look into to figure out really what’s driving that difference, but a cool result,” Mary Murphy, a manager for US-based Nanoracks, said this week. “Overall, I think it’s a pretty awesome first experiment.”

No one knows how the cookiestaste, as they are still sealed in individual baking pouches and packed in their spaceflight container.They remain frozen in a Houston area lab. The cookies are said to be the first baked item in space from raw materials.

Nanoracks, located near Nasa's Johnson Space Center designed and built a small electric oven that was launched in the space station in November last year. There are already five frozen cookies in the space.

An Italian astronaut Luca Parmtano, the mater baker in December noted down all the descriptions of how he baked the cookies one by one on the prototype Zero-G oven.

The first cookie was baked for 25 minutes at 300F, ended up under baked. The baker doubled the time of baking for the next two cookies, the result came out to be okayish but not great, according to Parmtano.

The fourth cookie was baked for 2 hours and was a 'success'. “So this time, I do see some browning,“ Parmitano radioed. “I can’t tell you whether it’s cooked all the way or not, but it certainly doesn’t look like cookie dough anymore.”

Parmtano baked the fifth cookie at 325F for 130 minutes and it was another success. No one can still tell how they taste but the baker said he can smell the fourth and the fifth one.

Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut mentioned that is was the only beauty of baking in space. Massimino is a teacher at Columbia University and is a paid spokesman for DoubleTree by Hilton. The hotel chain that provided the dough for the cookies. And was the same they offer to their guests.

“The remainder of the home, the connection with home, I think, can’t be overstated,” Massimino said. “From my personal experience ... food is pretty important for not just nutrition but also for morale in keeping people connected to their home and their Earth.”

One of the space-baked cookies has been offered to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum for display.

Nanoracks and Zero-G Kitchen, New York City startup who collaborated with the experiment, are looking forward to more experiments for the orbiting oven and more space appliances.

Baked cookies added the advantage of having fresh food in the space and astronauts can enjoy delicious items and avoid packaged food for a while.