Top Chef contestants compete to make astronaut meals

While chowing down on the competing recipes, 'Top Chef" judges wondered about cutlery in space, and the astronauts agreed on the importance of spoons in weightlessness.

"I still have my spoon from Apollo 11," Aldrin said of his July 1969 moon landing mission with Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins.

Magnus, who spent 4 1/2 months on the space station during her recent mission, said crunchiness is a "texture we miss in space." Rehydrated food loses its snap, and several of the dishes – including a sirloin topped with crispy onion rings – would not come out as nicely in a kitchen above Earth.
Today, the menu for astronauts includes 180 food and beverage items. These include tomato basil soup, chicken fajitas, shrimp cocktail, scrambled eggs and beef tips with mushrooms.

Astronauts can also munch on nuts, granola bars and cookies. Beverages come in powdered form and include coffee, tea, apple cider, orange juice and lemonade.

One astronaut, veteran spaceflyer Don Pettit, has even invented a zero gravity coffee cup that allows people in space to drink liquids without a straw by using surface tension to keep it from floating away.

Whenever possible, NASA tries to provide astronauts with meals that look and taste like those on Earth, space agency officials said. Astronauts have said that when they're in such an unfamiliar environment, food is one of the main things that remind them of home, they added.

Prior to shopping for and preparing their meal ideas, the "Top Chef" contestants received tips from NASA food scientist Vickie Kloeris. They were restricted by the same nutritional guidelines that NASA food scientists follow in the Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston. The "Top Chef" production crew, accompanied by head judge Tom Colicchio and the five contestants visited Goddard and filmed in the Network Integration Center.

She advised that high-sugar foods, complicated sauces and large food chunks tend not to do so well during the freeze-drying process that makes food space-worthy.

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