Top Chef contestants compete to make astronaut meals

It will be bon appetit in orbit for some lucky astronauts who will soon savor a space meal of short ribs dreamed up by a contestant on television's "Top Chef."

A Sept. 1 episode of the Bravo cable channel reality show featured a special space food challenge from NASA for the five remaining "chef'testants." The winner, Angelo Sosa, will have his short rib dish prepared by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and flown on a future space shuttle mission.

NASA also invited Sosa, who now advances to the final four of this "Top Chef" season's cooking tournament, to come see one of the two remaining shuttle launches blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The final shuttle missions are slated to launch in November of this year and February 2011.

After he was announced the winner of the contest, Sosa was ecstatic.

"My food is going to be in outer space!" he said.

Space food has come a long way since the Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s. Sosa's short rib dish competed against two fish filets, a Moroccan lamb pairing, and a sirloin selected by contestant Kevin Sbraga to remind astronauts of back-home grub. [Top 10 Space Foods]

Among those who tasted the cosmically inspired dishes during the show were former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, and current astronauts Leland Melvin and Sandra Magnus. The 'Top Chef' cooks received the challenge at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland during a video message from astronauts Timothy "T.J. Creamer and Tracy Caldwell Dyson on the International Space Station.

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