#MissionEspresso is ready for lift off

Space: the final frontier.

As Captain Kirk would allude to at the start of Star Trek, what lies above is a vast expanse that is just waiting to be explored. Man has stepped foot on the moon, sent reconnaissance vehicles to document mars and has launched satellites to map and photograph far away galaxies and stars. Man has even sent the Arecibo message to Messier 13, a globular star cluster some 25,000 light years away.

But even with all those wondrous technological achievements, man still hasn’t made one great cup of coffee whilst floating around in zero gravity.

But all that will change in the near future when the International Space Station (ISS) takes delivery of a custom-built coffee machine designed by Lavazza.

Creatively referred to as the ISSpresso, proving that the most obvious option is sometimes the best, the machine will be jetting on up alongside the Italian Air Force Captain Samantha Cristoforetti who will be making her first trip in space, becoming the first Italian woman to do so.

“Italian coffee is a beverage without borders,” said Giuseppe Lavazza, the current vice president of the famous Italian coffee company.

“Today,” he continued “we are in a position to overcome the limits of weightlessness to enjoy a good espresso on board the International Space Station…a real coffee.”

Due to the complexities of building a coffee machine fit for space and the perils of zero gravity, Lavazza worked alongside Argotec, a Turin-based aerospace engineering company, in order to design the ISSpresso.

Making a coffee machine that can brew the perfect espresso hasn’t been easy work; the entire mechanics have had to be rethought out due to the way liquids behave in microgravity and as such a rather large, and elaborate, engineering project had to be undertaken.

It has taken two years to develop and in order to withstand the high temperatures and increased pressure levels; the entire plumbing system has had to have been constructed out of steel.

But even though astronauts will soon be swirling up espresso, flat whites and cappuccinos in pouches – as that is the safest method to ensure no unwanted drops of coffee get spilt and interfere with equipment – David Avino, Argotec’s managing director, says that the machine will “help improve our understanding of the principles of fluid dynamics.”

So there we have it, a coffee machine for use in space.

How long will it be before there is quite literally a Starbucks?