Cooking has reached new heights. Astronauts on the International Space Station have made the first space-baked cookies. They said the chocolate chip cookies looked out of this world. The cookies are the very first kind of food to be baked in space from raw ingredients. Space food is usually made on Earth. It is dehydrated or pre-packaged and then heated or warmed up on the space station. Eating freshly baked food will make astronauts happy. It will be a nice reminder of home. This will be important for astronauts going to the moon or on the long journey to Mars.
Baking the cookies was not as straightforward as the astronauts thought it would be. Cookies take about 20 minutes to bake in an oven heated to 150 degrees. That was not long enough in space. The first cookie came out undercooked. It was more raw dough than cookie. The space bakers turned up the oven's temperature and baked the dough for longer. The fifth cookie they made took 130 minutes to bake. The big question is - how did they taste? No one knows yet. The space-baked cookies are in a laboratory in Texas. Scientists will test them to see if they are safe to eat.