By next year, astronauts at the international space station will be able to enjoy Japanese food such as ramen, curry and rice, and mackerel cooked in miso.

Actually making food for astronaut isn’t that easy, this is because the food has to be preserved long enough without a refrigerator. In addition, solid food has to retain stickiness strong enough to prevent it from scattering in weightlessness.

And the folks at Nissin actually managed to create ramen for the folks in space. Back in 2001, the founder of Nissin Ando Momofuku, has actually already announced his plans to develop noodles for astronauts.

After trial and error, researchers devised a method of making bite-size balls of ramen and coating their surface with the white of an egg to enable them to hold their spherical shape even when hot water was poured over them and also to prevent them from scattering.

The price of Japanese space foods range from 1,000 yen to 4,000 yen each because they are made by special order.

Source: Japan Today

I wonder if they would actually make these space food available at convinience stores in Japan.