
Michelin-star meals headed to space
Parsnip and haddock veloute, chicken with tonka beans and creamy polenta, and a chocolate cream with hazelnut cazette flower will also be on the menu, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.
Food delivered to the ISS must meet strict specifications. It cannot be crumbly or too heavy and must be able to be stored for two years, the ESA said in a statement.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are only available after a new spacecraft arrives from Earth with supplies.
So most meals in space are canned, vacuum-packed or freeze-dried from a set of options provided by space agencies.
But to spice things up, one out of every 10 meals is prepared for specific crew members according to their personal tastes.
"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 said in the statement.
Adenot's menu was developed by French chef Anne-Sophie Pic, who holds a total of 10 Michelin stars and was named best female chef by The World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2011.
Pic said it was an "exhilarating challenge" to develop the menu, which includes four starters, two mains and two desserts.
Adenot, a 42-year-old former helicopter test pilot, is scheduled to arrive for her first tour aboard the ISS in 2026.
A pair of NASA astronauts returned to Earth in March after being unexpectedly stuck on the ISS for more than nine months after problems with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Express Tribune
4 days ago
- Express Tribune
Keeping cool with colours
Many European cities are choosing greenery and lighter paint to mitigate the effects of intense heat. photo: file Equipped with an infrared thermometer, Austrian artist Jonas Griessler measures the sweltering heat in an inner courtyard in the centre of Vienna. Thanks to his collective's art work covering the black asphalt with a multitude of bright colours, the ground temperature has dropped from 31C to 20C. Initiated by the museum showing the private collection of late Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten, the project combines creativity, science and urban planning as Europe suffocates under the latest heatwave. "The childish tones reflect the lightness and inconsistency with which our society addresses this issue" of climate change, Griessler, 25, an artist with the Holla Hoop collective, told AFP. With more intense, longer and more frequent heatwaves a direct consequence of climate change according to scientists, European cities are trying to change their urban planning. Many have been opting for more greenery and also lighter paint that reflects solar rays, trying to avoid dark material, which retains heat. "We wanted to slightly improve the quality" of visitors' stays and "promote awareness," said curator Veronique Abpurg, happy that tourists are "attracted by this visually pleasing palette". While each coloured surface represents a year, they each contain small dots. Each dot represents a billion tons of CO2 emissions, and the number of dots on each surface are equivalent to the worldwide emissions of that year. This way one can visualise the increase in emissions due to human activity between 1960 and 2000. "The blocks gradually fill up," lamented the artist, whose background is in graffiti art. "It starts with nine dots, and at the end, there are three times more," he said. "It's a piece of the mosaic for adapting to urban heatwaves," said Hans-Peter Hutter, an environmental health specialist at the Medical University of Vienna, who supports the initiative. AFP


Express Tribune
06-08-2025
- Express Tribune
Death of a delta: Pakistan's Indus sinks and shrinks
Local residents carrying water cans head toward boats delivering drinking water to an island village in Kharo Chan town, located in the Indus Delta. PHOTO: AFP Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother's grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan's Indus delta. Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities. "The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides," Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, around 15 kilometres (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea. As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring until that too became impossible with only four of the 150 households remaining. "In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area," he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses. Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater. The town's population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data. Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and one swelling with economic migrants, including from the Indus delta. The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta's coastal districts. However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister. The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the impacts of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water. That has led to devastating seawater intrusion. The salinity of the water has risen by around 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations. "The delta is both sinking and shrinking," said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist. Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through disputed Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan. The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80 percent of the country's farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods. The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once ideal for farming, fishing, mangroves and wildlife. But more than 16 percent of fertile land has become unproductive due to encroaching seawater, a government water agency study in 2019 found. In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water's edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground. Boats carry in drinkable water from miles away and villagers cart it home via donkeys. "Who leaves their homeland willingly?" said Haji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level. He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating more families would join him. "A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice," he told AFP. British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects.


Express Tribune
04-08-2025
- Express Tribune
'Let's go fly a kite'
On Ireland's blustery western seaboard researchers are gleefully flying giant kites -- not for fun but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a "revolution" in wind energy. "We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power," Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture, told AFP. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-metre (645,000-square-feet) kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a cable tether to the machine and acts like a "yo-yo or fishing reel", Doherty said. "It gets cast out and flies up, the tether pulls it back in, over and over again, creating energy," he said, testing the kite's ropes and pulleys before a flight. The sparsely populated spot near the stormy Atlantic coast is the world's first designated airborne renewable energy test site. And although the idea is still small in scale, it could yet prove to be a mighty plan as Ireland seeks to cut its reliance on fossil fuels such as oil and gas. "We are witnessing a revolution in wind energy," said Andrei Luca, operations head at Kitepower, a zero-emissions energy solutions spin-off from the Delft University of Technology. "It took nearly 25 years for wind turbines to evolve from 30 kilowatt prototypes to megawatt scale, and decades to offshore wind farms we see today," he added. The system flies autonomously, driven by software developed at the university in the Netherlands, but Doherty acts as the kite's "pilot" on the ground, monitoring its flight path for efficiency. The kite flies up around 400 metres (1,300 feet) and reels in to about 190 metres, generating around 30 kilowatts for storage. AFP