Ever wonder what astronauts munch on when they feel like a snack? 

M&Ms and other hard candies, chocolate bars, crackers, peanuts and even jubes have been available for decades (and if NASA knew about Smarties, they’d be on the menu, too!). 

The Apollo astronauts had home-made trail mix and bite-size sugar cookies on their menu, courtesy of the head of NASA’s Apollo Food Systems team, Rita Rapp.

But corn chips and potato chips (crisps), or any other crumbly or likely-to-shatter snack foods (sorry, Violet Crumble!) have not been on the menu, due to the danger that crumbs or loose “flavouring powder” present to spacecraft systems and the crew. 

Chipping away

In the microgravity environment of space, floating crumbs, fragments of chip, or specks of flavouring powder could get into electrical systems and cause a short-circuit, which creates a potential fire hazard. 

They can also get into astronauts’ eyes, ears, mouth, throat, or lungs causing irritation and maybe injury. 

At last, though, corn chips have made it to space! The recent privately-funded Polaris Dawn mission carried Doritos corn chips specially adapted for weightlessness. 

To minimise the possibility of fragments, the corn chips are “mini-sized”, so they can be popped into the mouth and eaten in one bite. Instead of flavouring powder, the corn chips were given their “Cool Ranch” flavour using an oil-based coating. NASA already does something similar with seasonings such as salt and pepper. The salt is dissolved in water and the pepper in a food-grade oil.  

The zero gravity corn chips were sent into space packed in special tins to protect them from the rigours of launch. 

These space-flown canisters, along with limited-edition terrestrial versions of the space-Doritos will be auctioned to raise funds for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the United States.

We haven’t heard yet what the space corn chips actually tasted like when eaten in orbit, but weightlessness affects an astronaut’s sense of taste, so perhaps it was a truly “out of this world” experience? 

Media gallery

Click the below images of space snacks to read their descriptions.

astronaut food

JAXA Astronaut Soichi Noguchi holds a piece of rice cake.

Credit: JAXA/NASA

astronaut food

This spacefood package contains sugar cookie cubes. These cubes were eaten without the addition of water and were "bite-sized" to minimize the possibility of crumbs. Each Apollo crew member was provided with three meals per day which provided approximately 2,800 daily calories. Much of their food was freeze-dried and was easily reconstituted by the astronaut with a water probe. Other food consisted of bite-sized cubes of toasted bread, cookies or crackers, sandwiches and bacon.

The food was protected with a 4-ply, laminated film coating. This protected the food from loss of flavor, moisture and oxygen invasion, spoiling and excess crumbling, and was used on both the rehydratable and the bite-sized foods.

The NASA - Johnson Space Center transferred this to the Museum in 1986.

Credit: NASA and National Air and Space Museum.

astronaut food

Ramen Noodles pictured floating in the ISS.

Credit: JAXA/NASA

space food

This brownie is typical of Shuttle-era menu choices. Most foods stocked on the Shuttle are processed for storage at room temperature and packaged in individual portions. Snacks like this are vacuum packed in plastic for spaceflight with a bit of Velcro added so the package can be attached somewhere without floating away. This package returned from the STS-27 Space Shuttle mission (Atlantis) in 1981.

Credit: NASA and National Air and Space Museum.

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Main image caption: Polaris Dawn crew members with Doritos Cool Ranch Zero Gravity canisters | Credit: Frito-Lay North America

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