It's easy for consumers to buy food and drinks like a bowl of hot rice and coke online or from neighbourhood shops, but for astronauts such things were impossible in the past.
Members of China's Shenzhou manned space flight last year, however, were able to enjoy such food, thanks to Joyoung, a Chinese firm. Joyoung created a mobile space kitchen for the astronauts. A drinking water machine, an air heater and a soybean milk maker were all accessible in the kitchen through a smart app. Tang Hongbo, who was a member of the Shenzhou manned spacecraft said in the news that during his three-month trip, he could eat hot food with just half-hour efforts, a contrast to the past when similar attempts required several hours. "If we had time, we would also use equipment to eat homemade yogurt. We could also control the equipment in the space kitchen through mobile phone apps." he said.
In the past, most foods couldn't be directly heated in a microwave oven in the space. Conduction equipment often caused uneven (不均匀的) heating. An astronaut had to spend as long as four hours to heat some vegetables in the space kitchen. To solve the problem, Joyoung has developed equipment that gives out hot air to heat vegetables in a 360-degree way. That enables astronauts to eat steaming-hot fish-flavoured pork and Gongbao chicken, a spicy, stir-fried Chinese dish.
Besides Joyoung, a group of companies, including Xiaomi Coip and Huawei Technologies, have contributed their technologies to the development of the space station. A vacuum (真空) cleaner made haircuts on the spacecraft possible. NOLO VR, a Chinese virtual reality manufacturer, has helped astronauts develop an experimental equipment through which laboratory technicians on the ground can see and experience what astronauts are doing in space.
