SpaceX delivered Death Wish Coffee to astronauts in low Earth orbit

Jun 30, 2018 2:10 AM PDT

1 minute read

SUMMARY

The International Space Station is getting the most amazing home-food delivery since the early days of Uber Eats. The recent launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket bound for the ISS carried genetically identical mice, a spherical AI robot named Cimon, and Death Wish Coffee — the world's strongest coffee — at the request of Serena Aunon-Chancellor, one of the astronauts floating above the Earth.

The Strongest Coffee on Earth is now the strongest coffee in the Solar System.

The Upstate New York-based company created a zero gravity-friendly brew of their powerful joe just for the members of Expedition 56 aboard the ISS. The coffee has a whopping 472 milligrams of caffeine — more than twice the caffeine of a Starbucks Pike Place Roast, 13 times as much as a can of Coca-Cola, and four times as much as a Red Bull energy drink.

Astronauts love having fresh hot coffee aboard the International Space Station so much that they've designed and patented an espresso maker (called the ISSpresso machine) and the Zero-G Coffee Cup to facilitate their morning ritual.

European Space Agency Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti waits next to the newly installed ISSpresso machine. The espresso device allows crews to make tea, coffee, broth, or other hot beverages.

(NASA)

Not having to drink the coffee from a bag is a big deal to astronauts. Any coffee aficionado will tell you that being able to smell a fine coffee is an important factor in tasting the coffee. Astronaut Don Pettit was one of many who were sick of the bags of coffee. So he crafted a prototype cup using overhead transparency film into a teardrop-shaped container and poured the coffee in. The design worked.

Yes, that kind of overhead transparency.

The Zero G coffee cup allows for integrating the aroma of coffee into the flavor. The edge of the cup uses surface tension to wick fluid up the side of the cup's wall, using the same principles NASA uses for zero-gravity fuel tanks... and the ISSpresso machine.

The NASA-approved Zero-G coffee mug. Get yours at Spaceware.

Previously, astronauts used coffee brewing (namely pour-over style) to run experiments on fluid dynamics. So while the Death Wish Coffee isn't the first fresh-brewed cup of coffee in space, it still lays claim to being the strongest. Air Force veteran and astronaut Kjell Lindgren used coffee to test how fluids could be moved in space without a pump.

Lindgren and researchers from Portland State University took it a step further and developed a single-serve coffee brewing system that brews inside the cup.

Anyone who's deployed will tell you that the little things make the time away memorable. Being deployed to low Earth orbit is no different.