SATED enables astronauts to custom create fresh meal entrees based on nutritious and long-lasting food ingredients.
Home cooking in-orbit
or on other planets
SATED (Safe, Tidy, Efficient and Delicious) is a patent protected cooking appliance that operates in Zero-G as well as Lunar, Mars and Earth gravity levels. SATED utilizes a precisely heated tubular cooking rotor that food ingredients are sequenced into. The rotor is spun on its axis to create inner artificial gravity forces that press food ingredients into conductive thermal contact with the safely heated inner surface. After cooking operations, the cylinder is stopped and the cooked creation is drawn out from the rotor.
Home made Pizza from fresh space grown mushrooms, bell peppers, freeze dried sausage, and cheese with a tangy tomato sauce on a crispy wheat and cheese crust. Pizza like this, or your own special favorite, can be quickly and easily made in 20 minutes; even millions of miles from home, using ingredients that are shelf stable many years into a mission.
Fresh savory Quiche made from dried egg crystals, tomatoes, chives, mushroom, and dill ingredients with a toasted, freeze dried cheese and almond flour crust. Full of protein, fats, vitamins, carbs, texture, and flavor.
Robyn Gatens, Director of the International Space Station looks on as a quiche is drawn from SATED during NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge.
Photo: NASA/Savannah Bullard
Moist, delicious Lemon Cake with frosting, sprinkles*, and safe LED candles for a special shared celebration with someone back home or a crew mates birthday.
*See Tidy reference below.
Crispy Persian Tahdig made with slow simmered** rice, saffron, and a little oil, for an ethnic delicacy in zero-G.
**Note that SATED’s unique centrifugal cooker simmers and boils foods with ease.
Space crews and explorers will relish fresh healthy foods, creative culinary expression and community with every shared meal. On the ground, everyone from students to politicians will understand the reality of commercializing space where anyone will still be able to savor their own personal favorites from home.
Handling of materials that could create airborne particulates is currently discouraged in space because of aspiration danger and general needs of tidiness. The SATED system’s Downdraft Workstation captures particles floating above it onto the surface of a top filter layer. There the immobilized particulates can be simply vacuumed up with the ISS’s hand vacuum. If necessary after long use, the top filter layer can be rolled up and replaced without releasing particulates into the ambient air. The Downdraft workstation even holds down paper and lightweight goods like playing cards and food ingredient packaging.
The microgravity stabilization saddles will stabilize astronauts much more comfortably and firmly than the foot loops currently in use aboard the ISS. Firm stability from the hips will allow astronauts to exercise two-handed fine motor control activities like cooking, fine equipment repair and even medical procedures.
**Practical boiling in space has generally been regarded as impossible. However, by using the artificial gravity provided by centripetal acceleration, common Earth functions like boiling food, generating steam, dehydration and distillation can be easily accomplished. The figure at left shows water boiling under an artificial gravity of 3 G’s, a rotor surface temperature of 96 C and a heat flux of approximately 6 watts/cm2. Note that this experiment was run at Boulder, Colorado’s altitude of 1650 meters where water boiling occurs at only 94°C. The figure on the right shows boiling at an artificial gravity of 20 G’s and the same heat flux of 6 watts/cm2. Note that the bubbles are much smaller, the surface is smoother and the rotor surface temperature is only 95 because of less rotor surface dry out occurring compared to at 3 G’s. Note also that the rotor command temperature is an arbitrary setting that simply drives the Generation 3’s circuitry towards applying full heating power to the rotor exterior. The rotor inner chamber temp shown as 38/37°C would normally read out as the same as the ambient boiling temperature of 94°C, but the rotating chamber lid has been left open in this experiment.
SATED: Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient & Delicious stands for:
Safety:
- Intrinsically limited maximum cooking temperatures cannot burn or smoke ingredients. ISS-SSP 51721
- Touch screen indicator shows when ingredients are Pasteurized for use with in-situ farmed ingredients.
Tidiness:
- Temperature limits never carbonize residues so that the cooker requires only a damp towel for cleanup.
- Companion Downflow preparation and eating station (not shown) captures floating particles.*
Efficiency:
- Foods shown average 350 grams and require less than 120 watt-hours to produce.
- Boiling 100 ml of water to steam requires 92 watt-hours equaling 68% thermal efficiency
Deliciousness:
- Able to fry, boil, simmer, bake, mix, layer, weigh and toast food ingredients.
- Flavor reactions: Maillard reaction, protein binding, gelatinization, cell rupture and caramelization.
About: Ascent Technology LLC of Boulder, Colorado performs R&D in support of spacefaring.
Mission: Enable travelers, crews and explorers the means and ability to safely cook and share familiar comfort and healthy foods in deep space, on board orbiting platforms, and inside habitats on the Moon and Mars.
Intellectual property: SATED and the Downdraft Workstation are covered by patent US 11,918,142 and publication US 2024/0067367.