Special orders

Certain culinary considerations have to be made in space

Lucky peanuts

The NASA Moon probes

Rangers 1 through 6 all failed, so the pressure on JPL for Ranger 7 to be a success was huge. Mission trajectory engineer Dick Wallace thought passing out some peanuts might help calm things down. The flight was successful, and peanuts have featured at several launches or touchdowns ever since.

Tea and coffee

There’s no separate way to add creamer, sugar or sweetener to your hot beverage of choice, so every astronaut on the ISS has to let the food science team know how they like their drink before launch. All the astronaut has to do is add hot water.

Chilled out

There’s no food freezer on the ISS, but there is MERLIN. This cooler is designed for science experiments and provides a temperature-controlled environment between -20 and 48.5 degrees Celsius (-4 and 119.3 degrees Fahrenheit), but the crew can also use it for chilling drinks and foods.

Lunar palace 1

China’s Yuegong-1 created a menu of cultivated plants and insects mixed with externally supplemented foods that fed three humans for 105 days.

Cutlery in space

Each astronaut gets their own utensil pack featuring a knife, fork, spoon and scissors. Most astronauts find the spoon and the scissors the most useful. There’s no kitchen sink or dishwasher – utensils are cleaned with wipes after eating.

Apollo 10’s floater

During the Apollo 10 mission to the Moon, a stray stool was found floating through the capsule, having escaped from a waste bag. John Young, Eugene Cernan and Tom Stafford couldn’t ascertain whose it was.

Salt and pepper

Salt and pepper have to be in liquid form, or people could breathe it in or it could get in their eyes. The salt is dissolved in water and the pepper in a food-grade oil.