Click to enlarge

Enjoy your ice cream just as the Astronauts do - the freeze-dried way! Astronaut Ice Cream, as well as other freeze-dried food items, have been aboard space missions since the early Mercury Missions. They continue to be used on NASA missions today.

You dont need to be going on a trip to outer space to enjoy these NASA-developed snacks.

Created for the Apollo missions, they are freeze-dried so they have an extended shelf life (all the space food on offer here has at least 12 months shelf life, if not much longer!).

They don't look like real food, yet they taste like real food.

Simply tear open the foil outer and pop the freeze-dried block into the mouth (thereby re-hydrating it in the process) you will find that, more often than not, the unappetising-looking substance explodes with flavour. That makes these authentic all-American astro-snacks a technological marvel in their own right.

Freeze-drying, or lysophilization, removes water from the ice cream by lowering the air pressure to a point where ice shifts from a solid to a gas. The ice cream is placed in a vacuum chamber and frozen until the water crystalizes. The air pressure is lowered, creating a vacuum, forcing air out of the chamber; next heat is applied, vapourising the ice; finally a freezing coil traps the vaporized water. This process continues for hours, resulting in a perfect freeze-dried ice cream slice.

Net Weight 19g, Made in the USA Ingredients

Milk Fat, Non Fat Milk, Corn Syrup, Sugar, Strawberry Puree (Strawberries, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sugar, Water, Modified Potato Starch, FD&C Red #40), Whey, Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), Stabilized and Emulsified by Mono and Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Cellulose Gum and Carageenan, Artifical Flavour, Red #40 and Vegetable Annato colour.

Calories 120
Total Fat 6g
Saturated Fat 4g
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 25mg
Sodium 50mg
Total Carbohydrates 15g
Dietary Fiber 0g
Sugars 12g
Protein 2g

Please note that it is normal for the paper packing to be slit and for the product to be broken into chunks as this occurs during the freeze-drying process.