A few days ago, six astronauts on the Chinese Space Station ate delicious freshly grilled chicken wings and grilled steaks. This is made through the hot air baking machine that went up with the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft. It is the first time that a new oven has been installed on the Chinese space station, and astronaut food can be cooked and baked in orbit.According to a video from the space station, the astronauts took out the marinated chicken wings from the packaging bag, fixed them on a skewer and put them into a hot-air baking machine. They heated them for 28 minutes, and a plate of cosmic-grade Orleans grilled chicken wings that were sizzling with oil was produced.
Shen 20 astronaut Wang Jie and Shen 21 astronaut Wu Fei, two Inner Mongolians, also joined forces to grill a steaming plate of black pepper steak, and the six people feasted on it in space.
According to reports, space ovens are very different from ovens on the ground.The first is to achieve fume-free treatment during on-orbit baking through technological research on temperature control technology, residue collection, high-temperature catalysis, multi-layer filtration, etc., thereby meeting the fume emission standards of the space station.
Secondly, the purification device and the entire machine are strictly tested to ensure that they meet the space station access conditions and can operate continuously and reliably for 500 times.
In addition to the space oven, in the Shenzhou 21 mission,The types of food have been expanded to more than 190 types, and the flight recipe cycle has been extended to 10 days, enabling on-orbit cooking and baking of fresh vegetables, nuts, cakes, meat and other ingredients.
In addition, the "space vegetable garden" has also made new breakthroughs.
Since the Shenzhou 16 mission, the Chinese Astronaut Scientific Research and Training Center has carried out on-orbit plant substrate culture research and verification, using regenerated substrate, long-lasting controlled-release fertilizer and micropore water conduction technology to achieve effective supply of water and nutrients under microgravity. It has completed 10 batches of cultivation of 7 types of plants including lettuce, cherry tomatoes, sweet potatoes, etc., and provided 4.5 kilograms of fresh fruits and vegetables to astronauts. Among them, lettuce and cherry tomatoes have achieved full-cycle "seed-to-seed" cultivation.