European Startup Sends Wine Into Space

The bigger picture of sending wine into space, is not only for the potential changes in the vino, but whether space has any benefit of food preservation at large.

This will be a topic in a year when the wine comes back uncorked, so be sure to check back with our blog as we hope to post the findings as they get sent out to the media.

–USAToday— Does French wine pair well with space? A European startup sent a dozen bottles of Bordeaux to the International Space Station to find out. 

The wine was sent up from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia Saturday morning. It will remain at the space station for a year to age. 

Universities in Bordeaux, France and Bavaria, Germany, are working with Luxembourg-based startup Space Cargo Unlimited to conduct the experiment.

In a video published on Space Cargo Unlimited’s website, Michael Lebert, a professor of biology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and scientific director of the experiment, explained that wine is an ideal product to study in space.

Researchers will examine how decreased gravity and space radiation affect the wine’s aging.

The space-aged wine will be compared with wine aged on Earth. A company spokeswoman said the remaining wine will be given to benefactors of the experiment.

The bottles, along with an oven and material for baking chocolate chip cookies, barley for an experiment with Budweiser and carbon fiber for Lamborghini sports cars, traveled in a Northrop Grumman capsule as part of a cargo delivery, according to a release on the company’s website. Each bottle of wine was packaged in a metal canister to prevent it from shattering.

This isn’t the first time alcohol has been sent to space for research. Japanese whiskey company Suntory sent up samples in 2015 for aging.

Contributing: The Associated Press. Follow Joshua Bote on Twitter: @joshua_bote