{"id":399,"date":"2026-02-17T01:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.sciencepicker.com\/?p=399"},"modified":"2026-02-17T01:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:39:16","slug":"for-the-holidays-astronauts-baked-cookies-in-the-outer-space-but-they-wont-actually-eat-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/for-the-holidays-astronauts-baked-cookies-in-the-outer-space-but-they-wont-actually-eat-them\/","title":{"rendered":"For the holidays, astronauts baked cookies in the outer space but they won\u2019t actually eat them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This\nChristmas, scientists were baking cookies for Santa in microgravity. Certainly,\nneither Santa nor astronaut will be able to enjoy these baked cookies. Making\nthem was a part of a science experiment, produced to test a new oven on the\norbital lab. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of this experiment was to see\nif baking<\/strong> in\na space environment is even possible. On earth, it is pretty straightforward\nturning cookie<\/strong> dough\ninto a finished cookie<\/strong>. You just need to put a pan in the\noven, while hot air within the oven lifts and fans circulate the heat\nthroughout the tiny space<\/strong>. This makes the heat to be equally loft\nupon cookie, producing it to puff out. But in space, heating gets complicated.\nHot air doesn\u2019t \u201crise\u201d as it does normally on Earth, and there\u2019s no guarantee\nyour cookie will stay on that pan. instead, it might just float away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Zero-G Oven is designed to fight these\nproblems. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t just work as your oven on the earth,\u201d Mary Murphy, said\nduring a press conference before the oven\u2019s launch. \u201cWe might need to change\nthe design of the oven\u201d. To evenly heat the dough within, the oven is made in a\nshaped like a cylinder with heaters filling every side; that way, so that the\ncookie gets heated evenly from all over. And to make sure the cookie<\/strong> doesn\u2019t\nfloat away within the oven; the dough must be packed in via a special tray that\ntraps the ingredients inside a sealed pouch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca Parmitano, an astronaut, he tried baking samples on 12th, 13th, and 17th December with some success. \u201cThe oven is very, very simple to use, and I think it worked as expected,\u201d Parmitano said in a statement provided by NASA. \u201cWe were able to bake the samples, but it took some trials to conclude out how long they had to stay in the oven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Source: Pexels<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first three cookies<\/strong> came\nout pretty doughy, but the last two were nice and brown, with melted chocolate\nchips. \u201cThe samples are then kept in a freezer to be sent back to the Earth for\nanalysis. We\u2019ll see how well it worked!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this was very experimental, resultant,\nresearches didn’t want the astronauts<\/strong> to eat these improper bakes\ncookies. That\u2019s why astronauts<\/strong> only get clicked with their\ntreats. The samples will head back to Earth so that researchers on the ground\ncan take a better look at the finished products. But eventually, the idea of\nhaving the astronauts<\/strong> bake cookies they can\u2019t eat\nis to see if it\u2019s possible to have such small comforts of home when people go\non multi-year trips to deep-space<\/strong> destinations in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Christmas, scientists were baking cookies for Santa in microgravity. Certainly, neither Santa nor astronaut will be able to enjoy these baked cookies. Making them was a part of a science experiment, produced to test a new oven on the orbital lab.  The goal of this experiment was to see if baking in a space environment is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}