If two teams of NASA Langley Research Center students have anything to say about it, apricot crisp and lavender-scented strawberry honey cream desserts will soon be enjoyed by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
NASA Langley’s teams are among 25 participating in a national competition to develop recipes for the space station astronauts. The teams, from the New Horizons Technical Education Center in Newport News, Virginia, are battling for a spot in the final 10, which will compete at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in April.
The High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) Culinary Pre-Competition will be hosted at NASA’s Langley Research Center on 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 16 in the front lobby of the Integrated Engineering Services Building.
Media who wish to cover this event should contact Eric Gillard at (757) 864-7423, or by email at eric.s.gillard@nasa.gov, by 10 a.m. on the day of the tasting for credentials and entry to NASA Langley.
The New Horizons teams are not only required to make a tasteful dessert but they must research food process and science, especially related to the microgravity environment on the space station, to meet nutritional requirements. Their research and nutritional factor of the dessert are reviewed by the food specialist at NASA Johnson prior to the pre-competition.
A panel of taste testers will judge during the pre-competition and rate the desserts based on appearance, color, smell, flavor and texture.
This will be the second year that New Horizons Regional Education Center culinary teams have participated in the HUNCH Culinary Challenge, which was developed in 2014 to provide high school students the opportunity to design and create a new flavorful food for astronauts on board the ISS.
At the beginning of each school year, NASA reaches out to high school culinary programs to seek interest in the HUNCH Culinary Challenge. If a school is interested, the team must research food science and food processing using web links provided by NASA Johnson. The next step is a brief two-page paper describing what they’ve learned about food processing in microgravity.
In 2015, a culinary team from Phoebus High School in Hampton, Virginia, won the HUNCH Culinary Challenge and had their entrée, Jamaican rice and beans with coconut milk, included in an astronaut cookbook for preflight preparation to the ISS. Read more on their success at http://go.nasa.gov/2lMluzB.
For more information about the HUNCH Culinary Challenge, visit http://hunchculinary.weebly.com.
Eric Gillard
Public Affairs Writer, Office of Communications
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton VA 23681
eric.s.gillard@nasa.gov
(757) 864-7423
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