Ice cream on the astronaut's menu: 'Trick of the century' surprised many people?

According to the National Air and Space Museum and NASA astronauts, in fact, there is no such dessert on their space menu.

Many people dream of flying into space as well as living the life of astronauts in zero gravity and especially tasting their own meals. Among them, the ice cream dish is probably the one that raises the most curious questions, because how can a dish that can melt into a liquid like ice cream appear at the space station.

 This dessert is packaged in a freeze-dried form, usually flavored with strawberry, vanilla.

According to information easily found on the Internet, this dessert is packaged in freeze-dried form, often flavored with strawberry, vanilla, chocolate or a Neapolitan mix, which feels crispy and melts in the mouth. The dish can be found in science museums, brick-and-mortar stores, or online. However, according to the US National Air and Space Museum, it has never been used in any space missions.

This revelation caught many space science enthusiasts by surprise. However, they also admitted that they could not find any samples of ice cream for astronauts in the museum. According to the curator of the Air and Space Museum, Jennifer Levasseur, this dish probably did not make it to space.

So why is it called astronaut ice cream if astronauts have never eaten it in space?

Ice cream has never been used in any space missions.

Initially, astronaut ice cream was assigned to the Whirlpool company for research and development under a contract with NASA, to serve the space missions that the Apollo spacecraft performed. However, not much is known about the presence of this dish in food sent to space.

Since several reports in 1968 mentioning the Apollo spacecraft mentioned vanilla ice cream, Vox contacted Walt Cunningham, the only surviving astronaut to have been on the voyage, to confirm the information. Cunningham said he and his colleagues had never seen this item during their time on the mission.

 This seemingly simple dish has many potential dangers and troubles for astronauts.

Apollo 7 reports claim the crew ate chocolate pudding, but there's no mention of ice cream. Cunningham also shared, he thought it would not be good if astronauts used ice cream, the first time astronaut ice cream was introduced.

In fact, this seemingly simple dish has many potential dangers and troubles for astronauts. First, ice cream has a freeze-dried form, in zero gravity it can break into crumbs and float. This debris can get into the controls or machinery on board. More dangerously, the ice cream can get into the eyes of the astronauts or they breathe it in, and the workspace inside the ship becomes cluttered because the ice cream is floating everywhere.

Because of these unnecessary troubles, Chad Hadfield - an astronaut working at NASA - shared in a 2013 video that there is very little possibility of them eating astronaut ice cream in space.

Thus, the astronaut ice cream that we can find in many places today, turned out to be not the kind of ice cream that astronauts ate. Instead, it is an advertising ploy by food companies to induce buyers to use the product.