As Christmas is apparently celebrated not just on the surface on our planet but by astronauts in orbit as well, it appears that the crew of the International Space Stations made something special this season – a batch of cookies.
"We made space cookies and milk for Santa this year", NASA astronaut Christina Koch tweeted, delivering this reveal to her online audience. "Happy holidays from the @Space_Station!"
We made space cookies and milk for Santa this year. Happy holidays from the @Space_Station! pic.twitter.com/sZS4KdPmhj
— Christina H Koch (@Astro_Christina) 26 декабря 2019 г.
Some netizens appeared pleasantly surprised by this announcement.
Absolutely unbelievable
— salvador woody (@salvadorwooddy) 27 декабря 2019 г.
Congratulations! You made the first fresh baked chocolate chip cookie in space and I could not be excited enough for this! Shhhh nobody will tell if you sneak some dough. 😏
— Julia (@julia_bergeron) 26 декабря 2019 г.
S..sp..spacee cookies?!🙊 pic.twitter.com/DfZvyRMPXt
— Ag Asseblief (@ag_asseblief) 26 декабря 2019 г.
A number of people simply sought to share the Christmas cheer with the astronauts.
Happy holidays to you 🎅✨
— Gio_Cruciani (@c_ngc2158) 26 декабря 2019 г.
Merry Christmas 🍪🎄❣️😊
— Bobbie Addoms (@witch_ink) 26 декабря 2019 г.
Cookies and milk. Santa’s all time favorite snack. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas in space. Thank you for your sacrifice.
— Bob Brown (@waxbee64) 26 декабря 2019 г.
And there were also those who seemed really curious about the whole baking process.
Wander if your cookies ingredients are more evenly distributed since they do not sink to the bottom after the initial stir (I assume u do not use a centrifuges...).
— Mark Goral (@MarkGoral) 26 декабря 2019 г.
The cookies, however, won’t be used to supplement the astronauts diet as these goodies were apparently baked as part of an experiment aimed to determine whether such process could actually be carried out in a space environment.
According to The Verge, the space oven that was likely used in this experiment was made by a New York-based startup called Zero G Kitchen and space technology developer Nanoracks, while ingredients were provided by DoubleTree by Hilton.
And as for the "space cookies", they are expected to remain sealed and uneaten, until they can be shipped back to Earth for analysis.