The Tiangong space station is only three years old, making China the third country to have its own space station. Now it has made history as the first space station equipped with an oven that can cook hot food. The oven was installed by the crew of the Shenzhou-21 mission that arrived on October 31. Barbecue chicken wings and black pepper steak were the first dishes cooked using this oven in just 28 minutes.
This oven is not the same as on Earth because it cooks food without emitting smoke. It can also collect food waste, cook at high temperatures and is equipped with a multi-layer filtration system. According to the Chinese space agency, this oven can be used 500 times.
Although Tiangong is the first space station to have an oven to cook fresh food, five years ago an oven designed by NanoRacks and Zero G Kitchen was tested on the International Space Station (ISS). It was just a prototype that only cooked chocolate cookies and it took more than two hours.
Until now, astronauts' food has had to be frozen before being sent into space. Astronauts then have to heat it up with a hot water bath or a hot air oven. With this oven, Chinese astronauts can cook fresh food with ingredients like home-grown vegetables in space. It could also allow future astronauts to cook fresh food on their journey to Mars and beyond.
