Intrepid Museum’s Astro Live

Join us live on Facebook, YouTube, or X.

The Intrepid Museum will present a Virtual Astro Live program on November 17 at 3:00pm ET.

Food plays a vital role in an astronaut’s day-to-day routine, from shared personal experiences to building team cohesion and trust. While meals in space have come a long way since tubes of goo and freeze-dried cubes, food scientists still need to be mindful of providing meals with maximum nutrition, while also limiting their weight and packaging on long and distant missions.

Join us for a discussion with a recently retired NASA food scientist and author whose unique life experience of working with astronauts to plan space food and meals provides an interesting framework for stories of building teamwork, goal setting, innovation and leadership. Discover the development process for food systems in space travel, how times of crisis can lead to innovation, astronauts’ favorite foods, and the current challenges of designing food for deep space travel to Mars and beyond.

The event is hosted and co-produced by John “Das” Galloway, founder of the Kerbal Space Academy.

Participant:

Vickie Kloeris is a food scientist with an out-of-this-world career. She worked at NASA in space food systems for 34 years. For 29 of those years, she served as the NASA manager of first the Shuttle and then the International Space Station food systems. She and her teams worked through the complex challenges of creating tasty, nutritious, long-lasting, easy-to-prepare meals that support the dietary and psychological needs of astronauts living on the space station. Kloeris has worked with 100s of astronauts to plan their favorite meals and holiday specialty meals for space travel.

Kloeris received NASA’s highest honor, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 2019. During her career, Kloeris was twice awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and received the Johnson Space Center Director’s Commendation Award.

She earned a B.S. in Microbiology and a M.S. in Food Science and Technology from Texas A&M University. Kloeris has authored and co-authored many publications and done extensive public relations work during her time at NASA. Kloeris currently serves as President of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT).

About the Book:

Vickie Kloeris’s Space Bites: Reflections of a NASA Food Scientist takes readers through the many memorable moments of her career as she worked on both the Shuttle and International Space Station food systems. If you’ve ever wanted an inside look at what it’s like to assemble a sandwich in space, produce a space food breakfast for the cast of Apollo 13, or work side by side with astronauts as they prepare for the journey of a lifetime, you’re sure to learn something new with the turn of every page. A charming balance of technical knowledge and human experience, Vickie’s career memoir is a story for the scientist, space enthusiast, and spontaneous reader alike.

Available for purchase through Ballast Books, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

Moderator:

Elysia Segal is the Producer of Public Programs at the Intrepid Museum, where she brings science and history to life through artistic expression and creative educational programming. She served as the project director of the Crossing the Line research and performance residency and has created and performed a number of engaging, theatrical experiences for audiences across the country. A NASA Solar System Ambassador and the namesake of main-belt asteroid 17795 Elysiasegal, she co-produces Astro Live for the museum and is the host of This Week in Spaceflight with NASASpaceflight.com.

Host:

John “Das” Galloway is a science outreach communicator who specializes in live, interactive video content. He is the creator of the Kerbal Space Academy, where he uses video games as a tool to start science and engineering conversations with viewers of all ages, and VECTORS Virtual Field Trips, which brings real-time interactive video to museums, events, and historical locations. “Das” also serves as a host and producer for NASASpaceflight.com.

Funded by: Astro Live is supported through a NASA Cooperative Agreement awarded to the New York Space Grant Consortium.

The program is also supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.