You can now get your own taste of the "first cookie baked in space," months before the zero-g baking begins.
DoubleTree by Hilton, which is known for giving out warm cookies to its hotel guests at check-in, is celebrating the upcoming bake of its cookie dough on board the International Space Station by selling a limited edition "Cookies in Space" tin. The collectible container includes six of the same type of chocolate chip cookies that will be baked by the space station crew using a new oven designed to make long-duration spaceflight more hospitable.
"Our warm welcomes aren't exclusive to space stations and hotel stays. Order limited edition DoubleTree Cookies in Space cookie tins straight to your door," the Hilton hotel chain wrote on its Cookies In Space website.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
The ingredients to make sweets, space and hotel history are on their way to the International Space Station with the launch of a commercial cargo spacecraft.
The first kitchen-like oven designed for use in microgravity and the dough to bake DoubleTree by Hilton's trademark chocolate chip cookies — which are set to become the first-ever food baked in space — lifted off on Saturday (Nov. 2) aboard Northrop Grumman's 12th Cygnus capsule to resupply the orbiting laboratory.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 11-05-2019 05:55 PM
From Zero G Kitchen on Twitter:
Just got our first batch of on-orbit images! That’s a DoubleTree cookie with an outline of Earth in the background! Amazing!
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 11-19-2019 09:10 AM
From Zero G Kitchen on Twitter:
Good morning everyone! The oven is now installed and set to pre-heat! Let's get cooking!
music_space Member
Posts: 1179 From: Canada Registered: Jul 2001
posted 11-21-2019 12:23 PM
According to this video, the packaging shown on the upper picture is a silicon container used in the oven. Other interesting details too.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 12-27-2019 10:42 AM
Expedition 61 commander Luca Parmitano described the baking process in a statement provided by NASA to The Verge:
The oven is very, very simple to use, and I think it worked as expected. We were able to bake the samples, but it took a few attempts to figure out how long they had to stay in the oven.
The samples are now stored in a freezer to be returned to the Earth for analysis. We'll see how well it worked!
Expedition 61 flight engineer Christina Koch shared a photo of her and Parmitano with one of the baked cookies via Twitter:
SkyMan1958 Member
Posts: 869 From: CA. Registered: Jan 2011
posted 12-27-2019 10:53 AM
How well it worked? Did the astronauts get to sample the results? I would think if anyone could tell how well the cookies tasted and were cooked it would be the astronauts.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 12-27-2019 11:15 AM
The cookies were not consumed by the crew. The question is less how they tasted and more how the oven performed, so that analysis will be done by researchers on the ground.
Doubletree did send some pre-baked cookies for the astronauts to enjoy, though.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 43113 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
The first cookie to be baked in space may soon be bound for the Smithsonian.
DoubleTree by Hilton announced the results of the first-ever bake-off held off the planet on Thursday (Jan. 23), two weeks after three of its signature chocolate chip cookies returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS).