Crew-6 Mission Has Diverse Menu: From Russian Canned Food To US Bagged Dishes - Astronaut

HOUSTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th January, 2023) Cosmonauts aboard a spacecraft get a great selection of meals, NASA astronaut and mission specialist Warren Hoburg told Sputnik.

"Yeah, so we have a great variety of food. It's really wonderful and amazing. There's an amazing food lab here at Johnson Space Center that puts together many of our meals. The Russian food often comes in cans, so you open a metal can and there's your food. Our food on the American side is often in bags of one form or another," Hoburg said.

Some food and pouches, Hoburg added, just need to be heated, while others require something more.

"Other food needs to be rehydrated so we inject hot water into the food pouch, and then let it rehydrate for a few minutes and then it's ready to heat," he said.

They get everything from pastas to meatloaf to granola smoothies - there are hundreds of different menu items, he added.

Astronauts need carefully structured meals because weightlessness has a great impact on their bodies especially over longer periods.

Muscle mass and bone density can be decreasing by about 20% and this could be an issue when they return back to Earth by having bone fractures.

The change in taste also may occur - when we are on Earth, our body fluids are usually closer to our feet but when in space, they move freely throughout the bodies which can block sinuses and make the meals tasteless.

The International Space Station reportedly has a dining room with tables and chairs where the cosmonauts can strap themselves in to normalize the dining experience.

Hoburg will be part of the four-man team that will be aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Crew-6 which is scheduled to launch February 26 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The duration of the mission will be 6 months.

Other members of the crew, apart from Hoburg, are: NASA astronaut and spacecraft commander Stephen Bowen, Roscosmos cosmonaut and mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev and UAE astronaut and mission specialist Sultan Alneyadi.