The International Space Station on Tuesday presented 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine and hundreds of chunks of vines that revolve around the world in the name of science for a year.
The wine and vines – and thousands of kilograms of other equipment and research, including mice – will splash in a SpaceX Dragon capsule in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa on Wednesday night.
The bottles of French wine – each bottle housed in a steel cylinder to prevent breakage – remained on board the laboratory.
None of the bottles will be opened until the end of February. This is when Space Cargo Unlimited, the company behind the experiments, will open a bottle or two for a tasting in Bordeaux by some of the best gourmets in France. Months of chemical tests follow. Researchers are eager to see how space changes sedimentation and bubbles.
Agricultural science was the primary goal, said Nicolas Gaume, CEO and co-founder, although he admits it will be fun to taste the wine.
“Our goal is to tackle the solution of how tomorrow we will have an agriculture that is both organic and healthy and can feed humanity, and we think space has the key,” said Gaume from Bordeaux.
With climate change, Gaume said agricultural products such as grapes adapt to more difficult conditions. Through a series of space experiments, Space Cargo Unlimited hopes to learn lessons from emphasizing plants in weightlessness and translate them into more robust and resilient plants on earth.
There is another advantage. Gaume expects future explorers to go to the moon and Mars will want to enjoy the pleasures of the earth. “Because I’m French, it’s part of life to have good food and good wine,” he told the Associated Press.
Gaume said private investors helped fund the experiments. He did not want to provide the project costs.
The wine sailed to the space station in November 2019 aboard a Northrop Grumman supply ship. The 320 merlot and cabernet sauvignon vines, called vines in the grape growing industry, were launched by SpaceX in March last year.