While on Earth coffee nerds pay their respects to this flavorous drink at special section of EXPO Universal World Exhibition opened in Milano, coffee conquers the space: the cosmonauts prepared and drank a cup of real espresso onboard the International Space Station.
It is now possible thanks to the unique coffee machine delivered to the station. Even such seemingly insignificant activity as coffee making in space becomes more complicated and requires special developments and advanced technologies. Coffee machine is a “zest” of Italian scientific mission called “Futura” being accomplished by Samantha Christoforetti, the first Italian woman-astronaut.
According to her space espresso is quite similar to the usual one in terms body, strength and flavour.
Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Mikhail Korniyenko, Anton Shkaplerov and American astronauts Scott Kelly and Terry Virts also rated the coffee high.
Nevertheless coffee machine onboard the ISS is not just a feaster’s fancy, this unique device will be used for experiments to gain information in liquids’ behavior under 0g conditions.
