The International Space Station’s bid was submitted Tuesday to 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine and hundreds of fragments of grapes that spent a year orbiting the world in the name of science.
The wine and wines – and thousands of pounds of gear and other exploration, including mice – will be showered aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule Wednesday night in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa.
The bottles of French wine – each bottle nestled inside a steel cylinder to prevent breakage – remained cork on board the orbiting laboratory.
None of the bottles will be opened until the end of February. That’s when Space Cargo Unlimited, the company behind the tests, opened a bottle or two to taste in Bordeaux with some of France’s top connoisseurs. Months of chemical testing come. Researchers are desperate to see how the location of the sediment and the bubbles changed.
Agricultural science was the main focus, said Nicolas Gaume, CEO and co-founder of the company, although he admits it will be fun to taste the wine.
“Our goal is to address the solution of tomorrow’s agriculture that is both organic and healthy and capable of feeding humanity, and we believe that the key is in place,” Gaume said. from Bordeaux.
With climate change, Gaume said agricultural products such as grains need to adapt to harsher conditions. Through a series of space experiments, Space Cargo Unlimited hopes to learn lessons from stressing the plants in weight loss and translate those into stronger and more stable plants on Earth.
There is another advantage. Gaume expects future explorers to be on the moon and Mars will want to enjoy some of Earth’s pleasures. “Being a Frenchman is part of the life of getting good food and good wine,” he told the Associated Press.
Gaume said private investors helped fund the trials. He declined to give the cost of the project.
The wine went on a trip to the space station in November 2019 aboard the supply ship Northrop Grumman. The 320 merlot and cabernet sauvignon vinegar chips, known as cans in the grape growing industry, were launched by SpaceX in March last year.