What do they eat in space? A complete guide to astronaut food

December 31, 2025 •

4 min read

The first human to eat in space, Yuri Gagarin, consumed pureed beef and liver paste from a tube. This simple beginning has evolved into a complex and varied menu for modern astronauts, answering the question, 'What do they eat in space?' with surprising detail and diversity.

Quick Summary

Astronauts consume a wide variety of specially prepared and packaged foods, including thermostabilized meals, freeze-dried products, and fresh items, all designed for the microgravity environment. Packaging and preparation methods prevent floating crumbs and spills, ensuring nutrition and morale are maintained during missions.

Key Points

From Paste to Palate: Space food has evolved from bland pastes in tubes to a diverse menu of over 100 items, including international dishes.
Freeze-Dried and Thermostabilized: Most space food is either freeze-dried (rehydratable with water) or thermostabilized (heat-processed and ready-to-eat in pouches) to ensure a long shelf life.
No Crumbs, No Problem: To prevent floating crumbs from damaging equipment or becoming a hazard, astronauts use tortillas instead of bread, and food items are carefully packaged.
Taste Buds in Space: Fluid shifts in microgravity can cause sinus congestion, which dulls an astronaut's sense of taste, leading to a preference for spicy or strongly flavored foods.
The Future is Fresh and Printed: For long-duration missions to Mars and beyond, future solutions include growing crops in space via hydroponics and using 3D food printers to create custom meals.
Morale and Nutrition: Providing varied and familiar meals is crucial for maintaining astronaut morale and ensuring proper nutrition, especially to counteract bone and muscle loss.

The Evolution of Space Food

Eating in space has come a long way since the early days of exploration. Initially, scientists were unsure if swallowing in zero gravity was even possible. The solution for early missions, like Yuri Gagarin's in 1961, involved squeezing semi-liquid food from toothpaste-like tubes. These meals were highly functional but not very palatable. American astronauts on the Mercury missions faced similar issues, contending with freeze-dried powders and gelatin-coated food cubes designed to prevent dangerous crumbs.

Innovations began with the Gemini missions, where better packaging and rehydration methods were developed, expanding menu options to include items like shrimp cocktail and butterscotch pudding. The Apollo program introduced hot water, significantly improving the taste and variety of rehydrated meals and allowing for the use of 'spoon bowls'. A major step forward occurred on the Skylab space station in 1973, which featured a dining area, a refrigerator, and a freezer, offering astronauts a more normal dining experience and access to frozen foods.

Modern Space Food Preparation

Today, foods for the International Space Station (ISS) are prepared on Earth by food scientists and engineers at facilities like the Johnson Space Center. These items are categorized by their preparation method to ensure long shelf life and ease of use in microgravity.

Here is a list of the primary types of modern space food:

Rehydratable Foods: These are foods, like freeze-dried scrambled eggs or soups, that have had all the water removed to save weight and space. Astronauts use a water dispenser to rehydrate them before eating.
Thermostabilized Foods: Similar to canned foods or retort pouches, these items are heat-processed to kill bacteria and can be stored at room temperature for extended periods. Examples include beef stew and chicken a la king.
Natural Form Foods: These are commercially available, ready-to-eat items that are shelf-stable, such as nuts, cookies, and granola bars. They are often repackaged for space.
Intermediate Moisture Foods: These foods, like dried fruit or beef jerky, contain some water but not enough to support microbial growth, preserving their soft texture.
Irradiated Foods: Meats, such as smoked turkey, are sterilized using ionizing radiation to prevent spoilage.
Fresh Foods: Small quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables are occasionally sent on resupply missions as a morale booster, though they must be consumed quickly.

The Challenges of Eating in Microgravity

Eating in a weightless environment presents several unique challenges that food scientists have had to overcome:

Crumbs: In microgravity, food crumbs don't fall; they float. These loose particles can be a serious hazard, potentially damaging sensitive equipment or getting into astronauts' eyes and lungs. To combat this, tortillas are used instead of bread, and crackers are coated in gelatin.
Flavor Perception: Many astronauts report a reduced sense of taste in space, similar to having a head cold. This is due to a "fluid shift" in the body, where fluids move toward the head, causing sinus congestion. Consequently, astronauts often prefer strongly flavored or spicy foods.
Containment: Liquids float in space as spherical blobs, and food can easily drift away. Specialized pouches with straws are used for drinks, and food trays with velcro or magnets keep containers in place.
Waste Management: All packaging must be carefully managed to reduce volume and avoid contaminating the cabin. Used food containers are compacted and stored for disposal.

Comparison: Early vs. Modern Space Food


Feature	Early Space Food (e.g., Mercury, Vostok)	Modern Space Food (e.g., ISS)
Form	Pureed paste in tubes, gelatin-coated cubes	Variety of forms: rehydratable, thermostabilized, natural, fresh
Flavor	Often bland and unappetizing	Familiar, with more options, including spicy flavors
Packaging	Aluminum tubes, plastic pouches	Flexible pouches, easy-open cans, specialized drink pouches
Preparation	Squeezing from tubes, cumbersome rehydration	Simple rehydration with water gun, reheating in food warmers
Variety	Extremely limited menu options	Large menu with over 100 items, personalized choices
Eating Experience	Functional, often solitary	More communal, resembling Earth-like dining

The Future of Space Cuisine

For missions beyond low-Earth orbit, such as to Mars, resupply from Earth is not feasible, necessitating innovative new food systems. Future space cuisine will focus on sustainability, efficiency, and long-term psychological well-being.

On-Demand Food Production: Technologies are being developed for long-duration missions that would allow astronauts to grow their own crops, such as vegetables in hydroponic systems. NASA has already experimented with growing lettuce on the ISS.
3D Food Printing: This technology could allow astronauts to print customized, nutrient-dense meals on demand, using cartridges of long-lasting ingredients. It would significantly reduce the weight and volume of provisions.
Alternative Protein Sources: Research is exploring using sources like fungus (mycoprotein) or even insects to create sustainable protein-rich food options.
Extended Shelf-Life: Food for future missions needs to remain stable and palatable for three to five years. Scientists are constantly working on new preservation and packaging techniques to meet this demand.

Conclusion

The question, "what do they eat in space?" reveals a fascinating narrative of human ingenuity and adaptation. From the unappetizing paste of early missions to the diverse, carefully engineered menus of the ISS, space food has evolved to meet complex nutritional and psychological needs in a challenging environment. As humanity ventures towards Mars and beyond, the next great frontier in space exploration will involve pioneering sustainable food systems, from on-board gardens to 3D-printed meals, ensuring that future astronauts are well-nourished for the long journey ahead.

More Resources on Space Food

NASA Space Food Systems: A comprehensive resource from NASA detailing the history, development, and future of food for astronauts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Astronauts use special packages with velcro or magnets to prevent food from floating away. Drinks are consumed from sealed pouches with straws. They may use specialized utensils or simply eat from the pouches, with communal meals often occurring around a fixed table.

Freeze-dried ice cream is a novelty item sold in gift shops, but it was never actually flown on early NASA missions because its crumbs posed a hazard in microgravity. Real ice cream has been available in space, but only on missions with on-board freezers, like Skylab.

Astronauts often crave spicy food because the fluid shift caused by microgravity results in a 'stuffy nose' sensation. This reduces their sense of taste, so strong flavors like hot sauce are needed to make the food more palatable.

Beverages come in powdered form in rehydratable pouches. Astronauts add hot or cold water to these pouches to make drinks like coffee, tea, orange juice, and even chocolate milk.

After meals, all food packaging and waste are carefully compressed and stored in special containers. On the ISS, this waste is eventually loaded onto resupply vehicles that burn up in Earth's atmosphere upon re-entry.

Tortillas are used to prevent the formation of crumbs, which are hazardous in microgravity as they can float into sensitive equipment or into astronauts' eyes. They also have a longer shelf life and are more compact than bread.

Yes, experiments on the ISS have successfully grown crops like lettuce. For future, longer-duration missions, astronauts may rely more on bio-regenerative systems to grow their food, reducing the need for constant resupply.