A good party calls for cake. And if you happened to have been celebrating Cosmonautics Day on the International Space Station, you ate your cake out of a tube.
On Thursday, the ISS crew marked cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's landmark 1961 achievement as the first human in space by enjoying Moscow cake, a confection made with nuts and condensed milk that is served in squeeze tubes. The tubes are a throwback to the early days of space food.
Вот так проходило празднование #12апреля и 7 месяцев моей дочки Анфисы на станции - с космическими тортиками “Москва” и чупа-чупсами с планетами 🚀🍭🎂
— Oleg Artemyev (@OlegMKS) April 13, 2018
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The celebration of Cosmonautics Day and my daughter's 7-month on the International Space Station. pic.twitter.com/UGlZHYfPzZ
Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev tweeted a photo of the crew showing off their red tubes. The ISS currently hosts three NASA astronauts, two cosmonauts and an astronaut from JAXA, Japan's space agency.
JAXA's Norishige Kanai shared a close-up of his empty cake tube on Twitter. He described the dessert as sweet, and mentioned feeling a mix of excitement and trepidation about eating it.
今日は（日本では昨日になりますが）、ユーリ・ガガーリンが初めて宇宙飛行をした記念日でした。
— 金井 宣茂 (@Astro_Kanai) April 12, 2018
仕事のあとに、昔風のチューブに入った宇宙食「モスクワ・ケーキ」でお祝いしました。
甘さの中に、興奮とちょっぴりの怖さが混じった「宇宙の味」がしたような気がしました。 pic.twitter.com/evDmWF0ax7
The tube cakes reached a limited Earth-bound market in Russia in 2017, when the sweet souvenirs went on sale at the Moscow Planetarium, according to a report from Russian packaging news site Upakovano.
Astronaut food has come a long way since the tube days. They now have everything from pudding to pizza parties to full-on Thanksgiving dinners.
