The Expedition 64 crew aboard the International Space Station will be spending the holiday season a little differently this year. Teams here on Earth are hoping a special delivery arriving on SpaceX’s 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-21) mission will help bring the crew some holiday cheer.
We asked the public, “What would you want supplied if you were spending the holidays in space?” As of Thursday, Dec. 3, more than 550 ideas have been submitted by virtual guests. More than 80% of those submissions mentioned some type of food or drink – from the generic “just give me chocolate, lots of chocolate,” to the more specific, “my Tia Dora’s menudo.”
It turns out, that “food and drink” theme is pretty accurate. Teams with the food lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have packed the following items for the crew to enjoy:
Fresh Food Kit
Apples (Gala)
Oranges (Navel and Blood)
Mandarin Oranges
Lemons
Holiday Bulk Overwrap Bags (BOB)
Cherry Blueberry Cobbler
Cornbread Dressing
Cranapple Dessert
Jellied Cranberry Sauce
Macaroni and Cheese
Potatoes Au Gratin
Roasted Turkey
Shortbread Cookies
Southwestern Corn
Sparkle Gel
Spicy Green Beans
French Vanilla Cappuccino
Wheat Flat Bread
Other Food BOBs
12 standard menu containers
29 crew-specific menu and coffee tea preference containers
Six food physiology containers
Also bound for the orbiting laboratory are vehicle hardware, supplies, and critical materials that will support a variety of science and research investigations scheduled to take place in a microgravity environment. Learn more about the CRS-21 mission and the payloads on board at: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/spacex_crs-21_mision_overview_high_res_0.pdf