A crew member of the Shenzhou-20 and -21 manned space flight mission enjoys the first-ever space barbecue that took place recently aboard China's orbiting Tiangong Space Station. Photo: Screenshot from a video

"Finally, real food in orbit!" Global space enthusiasts have taken to social media to celebrate the first-ever space barbecue that took place recently aboard China's orbiting Tiangong Space Station using the country's newly introduced space oven. 

Using the new oven installed on the China Space Station, crew members of the Shenzhou-20 and -21 manned space flight mission enjoyed a space barbecue, video clips provided by the Astronaut Center of China (ACC) showed. After grilling for just 28 minutes, taikonauts of the Shenzhou-20 and -21 crew had their chicken wings ready to enjoy. Wang Jie and Wu Fei, from Shenzhou-20 and -21 crew respectively, also cooked the black peppered steak for Chen Dong, the mission commander of the Shenzhou-20 mission, Global Times previously reported.

X user@felix375 wrote, "For some reason this just sounds incongruous. BBQ and space is not something I expected to go together. I guess the Chinese astronauts no longer eat space paste for food." 

Retweeting the video on X, @gmcinerney wrote that "Watch Chinese astronauts enjoy '1st ever space BBQ' from Tiangong's brand-new oven (video). Finally, real food in orbit—beats ISS tubes any day."

The ISS previously tested a prototype oven built by NanoRacks and Zero G Kitchen, baking five chocolate chip cookies in orbit in a first-of-its-kind experiment in 2020, according to the BBC. It took the ISS astronauts up to 130 minutes to bake the cookies. 

"One small bite for a man, one giant swallow for mankind," @billiqin126 wrote in a Youtube comment under a video of the feat uploaded by the VideoFromSpace. 

"Meanwhile in the USA NASA can't get their astronauts back to Earth for 9 months, @Ac_a joked under the same post. 

NASA astronauts can order Chinese takeaway from Tiangong space station, joked another Youtube user going by @mranonymous9034. 

International media also took note of the viral video documenting the first-ever barbecue in space, praising China's technological breakthrough.

While the International Space Station once baked chocolate chip cookies in orbit as an experiment, China's oven appears to be far more powerful and practical, the New York-based tech site Interesting Engineering reported. 

Times of India noted that the oven also marks the rapid improvement in China's in-orbit living standards, from simple pre-packaged meals during the Shenzhou-5 era to a diverse menu of 190 items today. After long hours of scientific work, sharing a hot meal gives astronauts a sense of normalcy and connection to Earth.


Global Times