Saying Goodbye to Astronaut Ice Cream?

When you think of those elementary school field trips you went on years ago, one of the staples was surely tasting astronaut ice cream. In the 1980s and 1990s, field tripping youth at science museums always got a glimpse into the life of an astronaut by tasting the infamous freeze-dried treat.

However, these days might just be over - NASA recently announced that it will be revamping its in-space menus to include healthier options, including salad. So although ice cream might be on NASA’s chopping block, let’s take some time to remember one of the iconic relics of late 20th century space culture with some fun facts about the dehydrated treat:

• Compared to normal ice cream, freeze-dried ice cream can be kept at room temperature without melting and is more brittle and rigid. But it is still soft when bitten into!
• Astronaut ice cream was developed by Whirlpool Corporation--freeze-dried foods in general were developed so that foods could be sent on long-duration spaceflights and to reduce the weight of the water and oxygen normally found in food.
• The ice cream is produced by placing regular ice cream in a vacuum chamber and frozen until the water crystallizes. The air pressure is lowered, creating a partial vacuum, forcing air out of the chamber; next heat is applied, sublimating the ice; finally a freezing coil traps the vaporized water. This process continues for hours, resulting in a freeze-dried ice cream slice.
• Apollo 7 in 1968 was the first and only NASA mission on which freeze-dried ice cream flew in space.

Although salad might not be an apt substitute for ice cream, we applaud NASA’s effort to grow greens in space! To read more about the project click here - for even more info on the soon-to-be-extinct astronaut ice cream, click here.