Who can resist it: the smell of fresh-baking cookies? I know I can’t. Which is why if I were given the option of eating cookies baked in outer space vs. the good old Earth, I’d go the latter route.
According to Voice of America, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) recently tested an oven made for space travel by baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies from raw cookie dough. Here “at home,” cookies take about 20 minutes to bake, according to the article. In my experience, the time is more like 12 to 15 minutes. But let’s not quibble over a few minutes — not when the cookies baked in space took about two hours to bake!
The American company Nanoracks designed and built the cookie oven. …
The makers of the oven did expect some difference in the baking time in space, but they were surprised that that difference was so large.
“There’s still a lot to look into to figure out really what’s driving that difference, but definitely a cool result,” said Mary Murphy. She is with the company … which is based in Texas.
Murphy said the baking results will continue to be examined in order to better understand why space baking took so much longer. In addition, researchers will study the effectiveness of the baking tray, which was designed to work in microgravity conditions.
