When the French astronaut Sophie Adenot travels to the International Space Station (ISS) next year, she will be heading for the stars – not quite in celestial but certainly in gastronomic terms.
Adenot will dine on not just freeze-dried space food staples but also French classics such as lobster bisque, foie gras and onion soup prepared specially for her by a chef with 10 Michelin stars, the European Space Agency (Esa) announced on Wednesday.
Parsnip and haddock velouté, chicken with tonka beans and creamy polenta, and shredded braised beef with black garlic will also be on the menu, as well as desserts of chocolate cream with hazelnut cazette flower, coconut and smoked vanilla rice pudding, and coffee.
Food delivered to the ISS must meet strict specifications. “Any food delivered to the International Space Station must be crumb-free, lightweight and keep for at least 24 months,” the agency said. Most meals are canned, vacuum-packed or freeze-dried from a set of options provided by space agencies.
Nasa vacuum-sealed food on display at a space event in Colorado in 2019. Photograph: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images
The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin holds the record as the first person to eat in space. On his historic April 1961 mission, he sustained himself with a main course of beef and liver as well as chocolate, all squeezed from a tube.
But space food has come a long way since Gagarin’s Vostok 1 journey. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available to modern cosmonauts, though only when a new spacecraft arrives at the ISS with supplies.
For the sake of variety, one out of every 10 meals is prepared for specific crew members according to their personal tastes. Adenot’s menu was developed by the French chef Anne-Sophie Pic, who holds 10 Michelin stars and was named best female chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2011.
In France, Pic is known for taking over the family restaurant, Maison Pic in Valence, from her late father in spite of a lack of formal training, and subsequently regaining the third Michelin star her grandfather had first achieved in 1934.
Pic said it was an “exhilarating challenge” to develop the menu, which includes four starters, two mains and two desserts.
Chef Anne-Sophie Pic, who said it was an ‘exhilarating challenge’ to develop the menu. Photograph: Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images
“Cooking for space means pushing the boundaries of gastronomy,” Pic said. “With my team in my research and development lab we embraced a thrilling challenge: preserving the emotion of taste despite extreme technical constraints.”
Adenot said: “During a mission, sharing our respective dishes is a way of inviting crewmates to learn more about our culture. It’s a very powerful bonding experience.”
Adenot, 42, a former helicopter test pilot, is scheduled to begin her first tour on the ISS in spring 2026. During a six-month mission called εpsilon, she will carry out a range of tasks including European-led scientific experiments, medical research and maintenance on the station.
Moving at a speed of 17,900mph (28,800 km/h) approximately 250 miles (400km) above Earth, the ISS orbits the planet roughly 16 times a day, which can make breakfast, lunch and dinner times hard to keep apart.
Astronauts still typically eat three meals a day, with a daily calories intake of 2,500 as a guidance. Due to the special requirements for keeping meals durable and hygienic, feeding an astronaut can cost up to £20,000 a day.
Because body fluids behave differently at zero gravity, cosmonauts often complain about food in space tasting bland and request spicy flavours to tickle their tastebuds, such as horseradish and wasabi.
A pair of Nasa astronauts returned to Earth in March after being unexpectedly stuck on the ISS for more than nine months because of problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
Regular fine dining in space might not be the stuff only of science fiction in perpetuity. In April this year, Esa announced a project to assess the viability of producing lab-grown food in the low gravity and higher radiation in orbit and on other planets.
The team involved said the experiment was a first step to developing a small pilot food production plant on the ISS in two years’ time, making 3D-printed bavette and lab-grown frites a possibility for French astronauts of the future.