by It’s been nearly four and a half years since it was made in outer space, but if you could smell it today, you’d see that it retains the characteristic berry of a DoubleTree Cookie.
The world’s first food item baked in space, the cookie debuted on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia on Wednesday (May 8). Made from a recipe similar to the chocolate chip treats served to guests staying at DoubleTree by Hilton hotels, the cookie has been preserved as close to the condition it was in when it emerged from a specially designed microgravity oven on the International Space Station in a month of November. 2019.
“I can tell you it still smells like a baked cookie,” said Jennifer Levasseur, museum curator in the Space History Department at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “I wish the smell test could be available to everyone.”
Doing so, however, would risk introducing moisture and then mold. To preserve the cookie on display, it is displayed within a custom enclosure that keeps it and its original silicon sleeve within a pure nitrogen environment. Otherwise, just like any other baked good, it wouldn’t have nearly as long a shelf life.
“Because it’s in this special enclosure, nobody can smell the cookie now, which is probably to the cookie’s benefit because if you could smell it, oxygen might be getting into it , and then we would enter. a direction we don’t want to go,” said Levasseur.
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Hilton donated the cookie, along with in-space services company Nanoracks (now part of Voyager Space) and startup Zero-G Kitchen. In 2019, the three organizations worked together to send an oven that could operate in the microgravity environment to the space station. Since hot air does not rise in space, the Zero G Oven worked by using electric heating elements placed around a cylindrical chamber, so that a pocket of heated air surrounded the food in the middle.
The silicon pouch that was originally displayed with the cookie was used to hold the dough in place inside the oven and prevent any debris from coming loose.
Astronauts Christina Koch from NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA) made the right temperature and time to get the best result.
“We have baked a fifth of the cookies,” Levasseur told collectSPACE. “This was the final version that they feel got close to the actual texture you want to bake a cookie to.”
Returning to Earth in a freezer in early 2020, the cookie remained frozen until it could be delivered to the Smithsonian. (It was then sent to the museum in dry ice.)
“We needed to defrost it,” said Levasseur. “So the conservation team did some experiments ahead of time, doing the foot back again and then testing how long they would have to dry it and what conditions we need to store it under so that we don’t have to never worry about making models. question.”
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More than an interesting example of artifact preservation, the now-baked cookie represents the work being done to try to make long-duration space missions more enjoyable and sustainable for future crews.
“Hospitality and innovation are two strands of Hilton’s DNA,” said Shawn McAteer, head of brand for DoubleTree by Hilton, in a statement. “We are honored to be the first hospitality company involved in historical research aboard the International Space Station and to now have the DoubleTree cookie on display in the Smithsonian.”
“When people hear that the DoubleTree cookie is the first item successfully baked in outer space, we hope they will not only celebrate the experiment, but understand that DoubleTree is deeply committed to providing warm and caring service , all starting with our welcoming and iconic signature. chocolate chip cookie,” McAteer said.
Visitors to the Udvar-Hazy Center can find the cookie on display near the entrance to the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, displayed alongside other food items prepared for use in space. In a few years, the cookie will be moved to the National Air and Space Museum’s flagship building in Washington, DC, where it will be part of the new “At Home in Space” gallery opening in 2026.
“It will live next to other items related to food consumption inside our recreation of it [International Space Station’s] Laboratory module of destiny,” said Levasseur.
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