Shubhanshu shared the whole process in an Instagram video.
Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has shared a video on Instagram, showing how he prepared one of his favourites, mango salad during his Axiom-4 (Ax-4) mission. Sharing the video, Shukla wrote, “What’s for lunch when your restaurant is travelling at 28,000 km/h? For astronauts, keeping food contained is therefore an important part of eating in space.
We do this,” he says. “Add water, let it rehydrate, and then choose your preferred temperature,” he wrote. “A microwave, however, is one piece of earthly technology we don’t have on the ISS,” Shukla wrote. At the end, he wrote: “Bon appétit… from orbit.”
What does lunch look like when you are eating hundreds of kilometres above Earth? He explained that food on the space station comes in different forms, including dehydrated, freeze-dried and thermally stabilised foods. Each type requires a different method of preparation before it can be eaten. Shukla then takes the packet to a machine designed to add water to the packaged food. He connects the packet to the machine and starts the process. “Come on. So we plug into this machine. In the caption accompanying the video, Shukla explained that astronauts can choose how they want certain foods prepared after they have been rehydrated. “You can put it in the refrigerator, yes, there is a fridge on the ISS or warm it up in the food warmer. There is, however, one familiar kitchen appliance that astronauts do not have access to on the International Space Station. That means food preparation in orbit depends on the equipment available on the station, rather than the appliances commonly found in an Earth-based kitchen. Loose particles can float through the cabin instead of settling on a surface. Shukla summed up the process by writing, “So, even a simple mango salad comes with a little science, a little technique and, occasionally, a lot of patience.
After previously sharing a video of his team baking a cake in space, Shukla has now shown the surprisingly simple process of turning a packet of dehydrated mango salad into a meal in microgravity.