When it comes to eating in outer space , taste usually takes a back seat to practicality . This has conduct astronaut to dine on some somewhat funky cup of tea over the long time , includingthermostabilized yam , over - engulf tea , andborscht from a tube . With their 2d annual HUNCH preparation competition , NASAis now go for to place their visual sense a little high while teaching gamy schooltime educatee a thing or two about intellectual nourishment scientific discipline along the way .
Launched in 2015 , HUNCH ( high-pitched school United with NASA to Create Hardware ) give high schoolhouse culinary teams from across the country the chance to compete to have their dish served on the International Space Station . This year,30 teamsare vie for the top honor . Of those team , 10 finalists will be take to impose NASA ’s Johnson Space Center Food Lab in April to prepare their entrees one last sentence for a panel of judges , include astronaut . The win lulu will be march and drive home to the bunch aboard the ISS .
The first round of taste trial begin this hebdomad , and the meal — like baked penne and quinoa curry — scarce resembled what most people tie in with normal cosmonaut fare . In pillowcase wangle for spaceman was n’t nerve-racking enough , the competitors also had to stick to a strict readiness of nutritional road map to qualify . Each dish had to be veggie - based , contain at least three Hans C. J. Gram of fiber , less than eight Gram of clams , less than 300 milligrams of sodium , and contain between 300 and 500 small calorie . On top of that , the teenage chefs also had to make trusted their food was suitable for processing and consumption in microgravity . Glenn Johnson , a HUNCH design engineer from the Johnson Space Center , said in avideo for NASA , “ Some of the challenges that we ’re bet at are how do you have undecomposed nutrition , safe spirit , good smells after cooking the food , and then [ the astronauts ] may not eat it until three years later . ”
The winning dish at last yr ’s HUNCH competition was Timothy Miles Bindon Rice and attic with coconut milk from Phoebus High School . A blank space - favorable version of their recipe will be sent to astronauts aboard the International Space Station in March .
