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Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will soon test a new oven for making chocolate chip cookies. A spaceship carrying the cooking equipment and other supplies was launched on Saturday from the Wallops Flight Facility in the United States. The shipment, weighing 3,700 kilograms, reached the space station on Monday. The goal is to explore the possibility of making freshly baked cookies for space travelers.

American company Nanoracks designed and built the oven and helped with organizing the flight to the space station. Hilton Double Tree hotels supplied the cookie dough (生面团) the astronauts will use.

In the past, space station crews have created their own pizzas using a thin, fiat piece of bread known as flatbread. Astronauts have tried other creative ways to make food, such as creating salads from vegetables grown in the space station. Results have been mixed.

The cookie baking will be a slow process. The oven can heat just one cookie at a time. The test could take weeks before the astronauts have chance to try out freshly baked cookies.

Five unbaked cookies have been in a space station freezer for several weeks. Each is in its own individual clear bag made out of silicone. The oven can heat foods to temperatures as high as 177°C. That is twice the temperature of the U.S. and Russian food warmers on the space station. The oven uses electric heating elements.

Mary Murphy is with Nanoracks. Murphy says she expects a baking time of 15 to 20 minutes for each cookie when the oven is heated to about 163°C. She adds that the smell of baking cookies should fill the space station each time a cookie comes out of the oven.

The oven’s first use will be the real test. Without the force of gravity, the astronauts do not know exactly how the cookie will look. Three of the space-baked cookies are to be returned to Earth for testing.