Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata is currently active aboard the International Space Station. Last year Koichi Furukawa, then head of the space bureau at Mainichi Newspapers (a Palaceside Building tenant), spent five and a half months in space and reported many research results.
What do astronauts eat — and what do they have for dessert?
At the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington and the Kennedy Space Center visitor center, real space food is on display. The souvenir everyone buys is "Space Ice Cream" — NASA-certified since the Apollo moon landings after Captain Armstrong and his crew. Strawberry, milk, and chocolate flavors are freeze-dried; they look like chalk or lime and feel like Japanese rakugan sweets.
Place one in your mouth and it slowly melts — you can enjoy a faint ice-cream texture. The sweetness is modest on calories
as well. Room temperature is fine, but chilling in a refrigerator brings it closer to real ice cream.
NASA space ice cream and ice-cream sandwiches were developed for space exploration and inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame. You can order them online without visiting the museum — why not taste space ice cream under the autumn sky?