‘Space chocolate,’ mango nectar and pierogis: Here are the international foods the private Ax-4 astronauts are flying to the ISS

The next astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will have a very international flavor — literally.

That flight — known as Ax-4, because it’s the fourth crewed trip to the ISS by Houston company Axiom Space — lifted off on Wednesday morning (June 11) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast.

Ax-4 is carrying four people from four different nations to the orbiting lab, so the mission’s larder is quite diverse.

For example, Ax-4 pilot Shubhanshu Shukla is bringing up some delicacies from his native India, including a variety of sweets.

During a press conference on June 3, Shukla said he’s carrying mango nectar to the orbiting lab, as well as moong dal halwa and carrot halwa. (Halwa is a sweet dish made by roasting lentils, wheat or flour in ghee, then boiling that mixture in sugary milk.)

“Some of them are my favorites, and I am so happy to be able to carry them, share it with my colleagues and also the astronauts who are on the station right now,” Shukla said.

Ax-4 mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary said he has packed some “space chocolate,” which was provided by Stuhmer, a company from his native land.

“They modified one of their traditional models of chocolate, basically to comply with NASA rules,” Kapu said during the press conference. “So we are extremely happy to fly that, because for us it, it brings tradition and innovation together.”

Also going up are several spicy, paprika-like Hungarian pastes, he added.

“I’m extremely happy about those as well, because we tend to eat less salty foods on the International Space Station, because it actually contributes to bone loss,” Kapu said.

“So, because of that, astronauts tend to like, you know, spicy, and those [pastes] are really spicy,” he added. “We had also the chance to try this out in quarantine. And let me just tell you, we have so many coworkers here who found these excellent, and they just love it.”

Fellow mission specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, put together an entire menu for Ax-4. Polish chef and restaurateur Mateusz Gessler helped in this endeavor, as did Lyofood, a family-run Polish company with freeze-drying expertise.

That menu features pierogi, the famous Polish stuffed dumplings, as well as “tomato soup with noodles, Polish ‘leczo’ stew with buckwheat, and apple crumble for dessert,” ESA officials said in a statement.

“I wanted a truly Polish menu that I could share with my fellow astronauts,” Uznański-Wiśniewski said in the same statement. “Food brings psychological comfort, and I instantly thought it would be worth taking some Polish delicacies into orbit.”

The fourth Ax-4 crewmember is commander Peggy Whitson, a record-setting former NASA astronaut who currently serves as Axiom’s director of human spaceflight. She didn’t discuss her food choices during the June 3 press conference (though she did seem enthusiastic about Kapu’s spicy Hungarian pastes).

Ax-4 is historic; it will mark the first time that anyone from India, Hungary or Poland has lived on board the ISS. The mission is flying to the orbiting lab in a brand-new SpaceX Dragon and will spend about two weeks up there, during which time the crew will conduct about 60 different scientific experiments.