Five contestants on Bravo TV's Emmy-award winning reality show "Top Chef" will create special recipes for space food during an episode that will air at 10 p.m. tonight, and the winner will have his our her creation prepared by NASA and flown on one of the nation's last two shuttle flights.
Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin will make an appearance along with current NASA astronauts Sandra Magnus and Leland Melvin. Parts of the episode were filmed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Bravo posted a Two-Minute Teaser for the show at its web site.
Astronauts flying aboard shuttle missions order from a menu of more than 180 food and beverage items that include tomato basil soup, chicken fajitas, shrimp cocktail, scrambled eggs and beef tips with mushrooms. Space snacks include nuts, granola bars and cookies. Beverages range from come coffee, tea, apple cider, orange juice and lemonade.
The chefs will be restricted by the same nutritional guidelines that NASA food scientists follow in the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
A tip to the contestants: Whip up something spicy. Blood and body fluids float up into the head and upper torso in the weightless space environment, and astronauts often feel stuffed up, and their sense of taste is dulled. So spicy foods are orbital favorites.
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