NASA astronaut Don Pettit loves his coffee. So it comes as no surprise that he found a way to drink coffee from a cup, instead of the traditional straw, on his day off Sunday aboard the International Space Station.
Drinking any liquid in the weightless environment of space could be a messy affair. With hot coffee, it could be a potentially scalding affair. So astronauts use silver pouches and plastic straws to sip anything from water to orange juice to Pettit’s beloved space java.
“We can suck our coffee from a bag, but to drink it from a cup is hard to do because you can’t get the cup up to get the liquid out, and it’s also easy to slosh,” Pettit told Mission Control while sending a video of his new invention to Earth.
Pettit arrived at the space station last week aboard the shuttle Endeavour, which is delivering a recycling system that converts urine into drinking water and other new gear to outfit the space station for large, six-person crew.
He used a piece of plastic ripped from his Flight Data File mission book and folded it into a teardrop-shape that’s closed at one end. Surface tension inside the cup keeps the coffee from floating out and running amuck.
“The way this works is, the cross section of this cup looks like an airplane wing,” he said. “The narrow angle here will wick the coffee up.”
The result: space coffee in a zero-G cup.
Photo by NASA.
cassy on November 29th, 2008 at 1:12 am
As the world become more hightech, no wonder astronaut can invent things tht can make their life easier in a weightless space…
Jaclyn on December 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
This is a great story and invention! Just because their space thousands of miles away, doesn’t mean that they too shouldn’t be able to enjoy a nice cup of coffee without having to use a straw. being able to wake up in the morning and sit down to a nice hot cup of good strong coffee…there’s nothing on earth like it!