A special delivery of peanut butter, pyjamas and parmesan cheese was blasted into the cosmos to bring some Earthly indulgences to the astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS).
A special delivery of peanut butter, pyjamas and parmesan cheese was blasted into the cosmos to bring some Earthly indulgences to the astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The items were in a cargo capsule launched Wednesday on the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket to bring creature comforts like family photos and sweet treats to the six-person crew, but also bare essentials like oxygen, food and drinking water.
Perhaps the most anticipated among the record 1,400 items launched on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) are the care packages put together for each of the astronauts with favourites they had requested and little surprises from home.
"It's quite small, but you can actually fit quite a lot in there," ATV cargo engineer Kerstin MacDonnell of the agency's ESTEC research centre told AFP of the bread bin-sized container each crew member would receive.
"Some birthday cards or drawings from their children, or if one of them has a craving for chewing gum or beef jerky or whatever kind of thing they like," she said.
"For the most part it's just comfort things that would help the morale—personal items and mementos from the family."
MacDonnell oversaw the loading of the ATV Albert Einstein, ESA's fourth and penultimate cargo freighter to the ISS, launched from Kourou in French Guiana.
The unmanned vessel is set to dock with the ISS on June 15 at an altitude of about 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the planet—at a speed of some 28,000 kilometres (18,000 miles) per hour.
Among the ATV's record dry cargo load of 2.5 tonnes were day-to-day necessities like printer paper, tools, toothbrushes and socks.
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