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Out Of This World: ISS Crew Cooks Fresh, Hot Pizza In Orbit


American Mark Vande Hei (left), Russian Sergei Ryazansky, Italian Paolo Nespoli, American Joe Acaba, and American Randy Bresnik display the results of their made-from-scratch pizza pies on the International Space Station.
American Mark Vande Hei (left), Russian Sergei Ryazansky, Italian Paolo Nespoli, American Joe Acaba, and American Randy Bresnik display the results of their made-from-scratch pizza pies on the International Space Station.

You can't exactly order pizza in orbit -- so the crew of the International Space Station made some from scratch.

With ingredients shipped from Earth on a supply craft, the station's multinational crew of six prepared pizza pies over the weekend.

A video posted on Twitter by mission commander Randy Bresnik showed the crew putting the discs together and floating them in zero gravity before heating them in foil, in what looked like a small metal suitcase, and eating them.

"Our Expedition 53 crew had a blast channeling our inner chef by building #tasty pizzas for movie night," NASA astronaut Bresnik tweeted on December 2.

He called the pizzas "Flying Saucers of the edible kind."

The idea was reportedly cooked up by NASA's space station manager, Kirk Shireman, who learned that Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli was craving pizza and sent the ingredients up on a capsule in mid-November.

Nespoli's verdict: "Unexpectedly delicious."

Nespoli, who has been on the ISS since July, is scheduled to leave the station and land in Kazakhstan on December 14 along with Bresnik and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky.

With reporting by AP
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