Twelves bottles of wine are inside a Northrup Grumman resupply rocket, along with other essential supplies for the International Space Station. Unfortunately, the wine isn’t part of the astronaut’s supplies. The wine was sent by French startup Space Cargo Unlimited for a project meant to study the effects of space on wine aging, aptly named “Vitis Vinum in Spatium Experimentia” (“Wine Grape in Space Experiment.”). Futurism has the details:
For the next twelve months, the wine will remain on the ISS, sealed in its glass bottles, while samples from the batch age simultaneously back on Earth. After the space wine returns to Earth, the researchers will analyze both samples to determine how space aging affects the fermentation process of wine, including a bit of taste testing to see how flavors may have changed.
According to Space Cargo Unlimited’s website, the mission is “the first privately lead comprehensive research program on the ISS” to focus “on the future of agriculture for a changing Earth.”
image credit: via wikimedia commons
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NASA once had a space wine for the Skylab mission but that ended up getting nixed. I think the russians still send up vodka but otherwise the ISS is pretty dry. https://gizmodo.com/why-astronauts-were-banned-from-drinking-wine-in-outer-1513304233
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