The Staple Food That's Been Served On The ISS Since 1985

The first food consumed in space was a tube of beef and liver paste, but fortunately, cosmic cuisine has come a long way in the past eight decades. These days, astronauts don't just eat freeze-dried ice cream and fancy tube food — they also enjoy everyday items you probably keep in your own pantry. Case in point: tortillas have been standard astronaut fare for four decades. The flatbreads first traveled to space in 1985, when a Mexican payload specialist named Rodolfo Neri Vela requested that tortillas be brought on his mission. The crew quickly realized that tortillas functioned far better than bread when making space sandwiches, and they have been an orbital cuisine classic ever since.

Tortillas are an ideal space food for some of the same reasons that they're a perfect pantry powerhouse. They have a long shelf life, take up very little space, and are relatively nutritious (and totally delicious). However, the key reason that tortillas are such a great space snack isn't quite as important in the home kitchen: they produce very few crumbs, especially in contrast to bread, which they're often used as an alternative for. In a low-gravity environment like the International Space Station, airborne crumbs are nearly impossible to clean for obvious reasons, and they can cause serious problems if they get stuck in equipment (that's why NASA wasn't thrilled when an astronaut smuggled a corned beef sandwich on rye into space).

NASA's tortillas look nearly identical to the ones you might pick up at the supermarket (or stock up on at Chipotle). However, these aren't your everyday floury flatbreads. The space agency stocks the International Space Station with specially designed tortillas, which have an extra-long shelf life and anti-mold packaging. These days, NASA gets its space-grade tortillas from the military, but that wasn't always the case. In the 1990s, the space agency purchased tortillas from Taco Bell because the Tex-Mex chain's soft taco-making kit boasted a longer shelf life than any tortillas NASA had managed to produce (more proof that Taco Bell has fast food innovation down to a science).

In 2024, ISS crew members ate over 3,000 tortillas. Astronauts eat their tortillas in a wide variety of ways, from classics like breakfast burritos and tacos (you can't have a space taco party without tortillas) to more creative variations such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hamburgers, and even pizza. If all this tortilla talk has you craving something more down-to-earth, consider making some tasty and therapeutic homemade tortillas.