What Food Do You Put in the Rockets for the Astronauts?

First Name: Emily
First Letter of Last Name: E
Grade: 5
What is your favorite planet or star?: Earth
What is your favorite rocket?: Apollo
Type your question here.: What food do you put in the rockets for the astronauts? and does it taste good?

Thanks for your great question, Emily! My favorite planet is also Earth! I like it because God specially created Earth for us to inhabit. And the Saturn V, which is the rocket used during the Apollo days by NASA, is my favorite too!

During my rocket science career, I was involved with many of the International Space Station (ISS) Commercial Resupply Missions. This is a really cool program for NASA that provides basic supplies (with all sorts of yummy food) and science equipment to the astronauts onboard the ISS that’s orbiting at about 250 miles (traveling at 17,500 mph) above the Earth!

One of my favorite ISS deliveries was the mission1 when we launched over three tons of food and supplies, along with some small holiday gifts from the astronauts’ families. And part of this food package included pizza, ice cream, and even a traditional turkey dinner (including mashed potatoes, corn bread, and yams) for Thanksgiving! This was definitely an awesome mission that the astronauts really enjoyed. They even beamed back a video from the ISS to Earth with a short message2 expressing their thankfulness and saying how cool it was to spend Thanksgiving in space!

Screenshot of the Expedition-53 astronaut crew on the ISS after recording their Thanksgiving message (via NASA YouTube)

And in case you’re wondering how this astronaut food gets packaged for delivery, most of it is first prepped at the Space Food Research Facility at Texas A&M University.3 It’s actually a really cool process! Here, “ready-to-eat” packets of food (called MREs) are prepared and tightly sealed, then processed with heat to prevent any germs from traveling to the ISS. Then, before launch, each astronaut gets to taste all the food and color-code their favorites! The selected food packets are then sent to the launch site and loaded into the spacecraft prior to flying to the ISS.

The Expedition-53 astronaut crew’s Thanksgiving table on the ISS (via NASA).

Now, as to whether (or not) this food actually tastes good after it finally arrives at the ISS? I’ve never personally eaten it, so I can’t say for certain! But I assume it doesn’t taste as good as when it was freshly made here on Earth. I imagine the astronauts aren’t too picky, and they probably say it’s still pretty good tasting! (Relatively speaking, given the circumstances!)

Overall, these Thanksgiving food delivery missions to the ISS should remind us to always be grateful in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18), giving thanks to our awesome God and Lord Jesus Christ (Psalm 100:4; Ephesians 5:20) who makes cool space missions (like launching out-of-this-world turkey dinners into space) an actual and exciting reality!

I hope you enjoyed learning about this cool (and fun) ISS resupply mission! God bless!

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