Thousands of miles above Earth, Hong Kong's first astronaut Lai Ka-ying and her Shenzhou-23 crewmates have unlocked a new menu featuring baked pumpkin after a month in orbit.
The new dish was hot out of the oven in the latest Tiangong space station footage on Sunday, which offered a lively glimpse into their packed schedule aboard the spacecraft.
The footage shows the three astronauts—Lai, commander Zhu Yangzhu, and pilot Zhang Zhiyuan—steadily advancing scientific experiments while also undergoing routine exercises.
Among the highlights was a taste of home, where the crew used a Chinese-developed oven to bake chunks of sweet pumpkin, enjoying a warm treat in the spacecraft.
The oven, a key instrument of the station's space kitchen, was developed by Joyoung, which was selected to develop the space kitchen system in 2014.
It is understood that the kitchen was successfully carried alongside the launch of the Tianhe core module in April 2021, and has been operating on the Tiangong Space Station ever since.
The space kitchen reportedly includes a water dispenser, a hot-air oven, a smart aerospace app, as well as a space soymilk maker.
Equipped with a residue collector, heating mesh, baking tray, and net cage, the oven tackles the challenge of residue collection in microgravity.
Notably, it can also heat food to temperatures as high as 190 degrees Celsius, marking a significant upgrade from the previous 100-degree limit.
During its year-long stay in orbit, the Shenzhou-23 crew is on a mission to conduct over 100 scientific and applied projects in life sciences, materials science, fluid physics, and medicine.
