Astronauts On The ISS Can Bake Cookies In Space For The First Time

NASA says the Cygnus cargo spacecraft launched over the weekend has successfully docked with the International Space Station. Amid the cargo contained on this vessel is a special oven and cookie dough that brings a special new capability to the ISS: the ability to bake chocolate chip cookies. The experiment comes from DoubleTree by Hilton and Zero G Kitchen.

The latest cargo spacecraft launched early on November 2 and arrived even earlier this morning. As first revealed earlier this year, DoubleTree by Hilton teamed with Zero G Kitchen on a project involving a special oven and cookie dough for baking DoubleTree-brand chocolate cookies in space...the first cookies ever cooked outside of our planet.

It's not possible to bake cookies the ordinary way in space due to the microgravity environment. The prototype oven sent into space was designed specifically to deal with that issue, including featuring special 'cookie trays' that prevent the treats from floating around inside of the cooking space.

Unfortunately, astronauts will not be able to eat the cookies they bake — premade cookies were sent in their place so that researchers could have a treat for their work, however. This experiment will provide some interesting results, even if it isn't the most pressing of scientific inquiries. How will cookies form as they bake in a microgravity environment? No one knows at this time.

The space cookies will be sent back to Earth where researchers will analyze them to see how they turned out. The experiment will settle a few questions you didn't know you had, such as what chocolate chip cookies look like when they're cooked on a big space station. The work will help pave the way for baking cookies at future human outposts in space.