3-2-1-Cookoff! Astronauts to bake cookies with new test oven

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Forget reheated, freeze-dried space grub. Astronauts are about to get a new test oven for baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

The next delivery of supplies for the International Space Station — scheduled for liftoff this weekend — includes the Zero G Oven. Chocolate chip cookie dough is already up there, waiting to pop into this small electric oven designed for zero gravity.

As a tantalizing incentive, sample cookies baked just this week are also launching Saturday from Virginia on Northrop Grumman's Cygnus capsule, for the six station astronauts.

The experiment explores the possibility of making freshly baked goods for space travelers. With NASA eyeing trips to the moon and Mars, homemade food takes on heightened importance. What's in orbit now are essentially food warmers.

Run by a New York couple, Zero G Kitchen aims to create a kitchen in space one appliance at a time, starting with the oven.

"You're in space. I mean, you want to have the smell of cookies," said Zero G Kitchen's Jordana Fichtenbaum, a social media specialist for hotels and restaurants. "The kitchen is really sort of the heart of the home to me, and the oven is kind of where it's at. So just to make (space) more comfortable and make it more pleasant, more delicious."

Out-of-this-world baking can also entice the public and make space exploration more relatable, according to her husband, Ian Fichtenbaum, who works in the space business.

Also collaborating on this first-of-its-kind space bake: Texas-based Nanoracks, which designed and built the oven and arranged the flight, and DoubleTree, which supplied the same cookie dough used by the hotel chain for welcome cookies.

"That's the beauty of this to me," Jordana Fichtenbaum said by phone earlier this week....