It seems like a joke, but it's science at the height of the space race, because China has just carried out an unusual event aboard its Tiangong space station, the astronauts roasted meat in a kind of space barbecue, with chicken wings and steaks with black pepper in an oven specially designed to operate in zero gravity.
The feat was confirmed by the state agency Global Times and marks a new step in the search for real food in space, that which is more similar to that on Earth and less like survival food. The oven delivered to the station by the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft represents a culinary and technological leap.
In microgravity it is very difficult to cook, if you do it with an electric fryer the hot air does not rise, the cold does not go down and the result usually creates a culinary disaster, raw pieces on one side and burnt pieces on the other. To solve this, the engineers at the China Astronaut Center created a system that works like an orbital air fryer with internal fans that circulate the hot air in a controlled and uniform way.
And to prevent the station from smelling of grease and smoke, the system has multi-layer filters that capture particles before they contaminate the module's recycled air. Another challenge was to ensure that the food did not float during preparation. The solution was a grill that closes like a basket, keeping the food secured while the oven works.
In initial testing, the wings and steaks were ready in just 28 minutes. It is a feat when compared to the experiments on the international space station, where baking a simple cookie could take up to 2 hours. The objective of the project goes beyond gastronomic curiosity, it is to improve the health and mood of the astronauts.
Eating well is essential on long and isolated missions and the new oven could expand the Tiangong menu from 10 to 190 different dishes, now the Chinese plan to include more fresh foods, reducing dependence on dehydrated packages and heat-stabilized meals