Daily Archives: November 22, 2014

Astronauts on the International Space Station will soon be waking up to the refreshing aroma and taste of authentic Italian coffee.

ISSpresso, an espresso machine designed by engineering company Argotec and coffee roaster Lavazza in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, is one of the many items headed to space in April 2015.

"We have been thinking about taking the espresso into space for some time...In fact, today we are in a position to overcome the limits of weightlessness and enjoy a good espresso the indisputable symbol of made in Italy products," said the Giuseppe Lavazza, vice-president of Lavazza in a press release.

The device is the first capsule-based coffee machine to be sent to space and the first designed to handle its microgravity conditions in which the physics behind the dynamics and movement of liquids differ from that on Earth. Microgravity refers to "zero gravity" or weightless.

"The fluid dynamic in a microgravity environment is different from the one observed on Earth," Antonio Pilello, a spokesperson for Argotec told ABC News in an email. "Since you are weightless in orbit, there is no up, down, left nor right. For this reason we designed our system to be capable of making coffees without being affected by gravity."

The machine is comprised of a steel tube to transport water while being able to tolerate over 400 bars of pressure. The machine, weighing 20 kilograms, also has extra important components to maintain safety protocols issued in accordance with specific regulations set by the Italian Space Agency.

Courtesy Lavazza

PHOTO: The Italian Space Agency is sending the first espresso coffee machine to the International Space Station. Made by Lavazza and Agrotec, it is designed to withstand extreme amounts of pressure and can operate in microgravity conditions.

ISSpresso will also offer other options, including caffe lungo, tea, infusions and broth, allowing food to be re-hydrated. Astronauts will be able to drink these substances using small pouches with valves that are inserted into and draw coffee from the machine.

Pilello told ABC News that only instant coffee is available for astronauts right now.

More here:
A Giant Step for Coffee Lovers: Italian Espresso Headed To Space

Provided by Sky News

The 10-year programme being led by researchers in Norway will see foods such as cherry tomatoes, lettuce and soybeans grown on the International Space Station (ISS).

Called Time Scale, the project is being run alongside the EU and the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate how food plants grow in space and how the plants can help supply space travellers with food and air in the future.

Ann-Iren Kittang Jost, research manager at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space (CIRIS) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, is leading the project.

"I do envision that what we can form the basis for food cultivation on the Moon and Mars sometime in the future," she told Science Nordic.

"These are just a few preliminary steps. I don't want to venture a guess regarding how long it will take before they can be used on a large scale.

"We haven't decided which food plant to cultivate yet. We've discussed cherry tomatoes, lettuce or soybeans."

Astronauts need around 30kg of water, food and air each day and despite some recycling of water on the ISS, supplies must be delivered from earth at huge cost.

Plant experiments on the ISS have been run from the CIRIS control room in Trondheim since 2006, mostly on the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana - the first to have its genome sequenced.

But Ms Kittang Jost said the cultivation of more complex organisms in space conditions required far more research.

Continue reading here:
Bean Me Up: Scientists To Grow Crops In Space

The tomato seeds spent almost two years in outer space before making their way to Nandita Bajajs Grade 9 science class.

And after an experiment that began at the start of this school year comparing the percentage of space seeds that germinated compared to those with earthly beginnings Bajaj did the big reveal on Friday, giving the excited teens the results.

In the past weve done different experiments to teach the scientific method, but the unit after this is astronomy, so the Tomatosphere project worked well on two fronts, said Bajaj, who has a degree in aerospace engineering as well as teaching.

The best thing about the experiment is the awareness of how real science is conducted, she said, and it gives students a chance to experience something that is part of a real-world experiment on the effects of space on food growth.

Some 18,000 students across North America will take part in the Tomatosphere program this year, and about three million have since it began 13 years ago.

Bajajs class received certificates from the Canadian Space Agency, handed out on Friday, for taking part in the mass experiment.

Tomatosphere is in part sponsored by Lets Talk Science, the Canadian Space Agency and the University of Guelph.

The seeds for Bajajs class at Northview Heights Secondary School some travelled more than 450 million kilometres were brought back to Earth last year from the International Space Station by famed Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

The class received space and non-space tomato seeds, which they were asked to germinate, without knowing which was which, and to then compare success rates for each set.

Ten days ago, their work was sent to the Canadian Space Agency. Their results were close to the overall average about 65 per cent of their 113 earthly seeds germinated, while 57 per cent of the 113 space ones did.

Read more:
Toronto students' space tomatoes out of this world