The Space Cargo Unlimited initiative sent 12 bottles of wine to space, but will not be consumed by any astronaut.
Scientific experiments have taken a gigantic step, because they are no longer only carried out on Earth: they now take place in space.
You might think that space missions are meant to find new planets or life on other planets, but it is not necessarily so.
In order to help the food industry, NASA allowed the arrival of 12 bottles of wine at the International Space Station (ISS).
Space Cargo Unlimited is the company responsible for this event, as they have a scientific branch specially dedicated to Space Biology.
The experiment aims for the wine in these bottles, originally from Bordeaux, France to age in a year in space and return to Earth to be evaluated.
Scientists seek to know if zero gravity and radiation can affect the chemistry of the liquid and develop with it new flavors and properties.
The 12 bottles were packed in a metal cylinder to avoid fractures and were shipped from Virginia, United States, on Saturday, November 2.
The bottles arrived at the Space Station in the Cygnus capsule, which also traveled with an oven for chocolate cookies and carbon fiber samples used by Lamborghini.
At the same time, on Earth another 12 bottles of the same wine will be added to compare them with those that traveled to space.
Bordeaux wine uses yeasts and bacteria that made it an ideal candidate to be sent to space.
Both wine samples will remain isolated at an average temperature of 18º Celsius and without moving them, so that the biological components do their job properly.
The universities of Bordeaux and Babaria are involved in the experiment and scientists predict that the wines will have different flavors within a year.
With the purpose of revolutionizing the food industry and agriculture, this is the first of six missions that Space Cargo Unlimited has planned within the next 3 years.
Beyond looking to market aged wine in space, what Space Cargo Unlimited intends is to find new ways to preserve food in the future and this could be an option.
This is not the first time that a bottle of wine travels to space, because in 1985 a French astronaut took one on the Discovery ferry on a mission.
The bottle remained clogged in orbit, but had no point of comparison when returning to Earth and not spent a year in space, as the new experiment intends.
Source: Vix
