Over the holidays, the ISS crew baked the first-ever space cookies as part of a test of a new zero gravity oven system. The oven, created by NanoRacks and Zero G Kitchen, used electrical heat to bake the experimental cookies one at a time. The first cookie came out way underdone after 25 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, so they put the second and third ones in for 50 minutes. But they, too, were not baked enough. The fourth went in at the same temperature for two hours and came out looking much better, and the fifth and final cookie took two hours at 325 degrees Fahrenheit and came out looking pretty darn tasty.
The astronauts, however, resisted the temptation to eat the cookies, instead packaging them up and freezing them. A SpaceX vehicle returned the frozen cookies to Earth in mid-January, where they will be thoroughly tested by scientists. One of them will then find itself on display at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
