Tortillas Make It to Deep Space on Artemis II, and There's a Latino Story Behind It

When NASA's Artemis II crew blasted off Wednesday on humanity's first crewed journey toward the moon in more than 50 years, they brought with them cutting-edge technology, years of training, and one deeply practical staple with an unmistakably Latino resonance: tortillas.

Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen took an interesting menu aboard the Orion spacecraft for a mission expected to last just under 10 days and swing around the moon before returning to Earth.

NASA recently revealed that the Artemis II food system includes carefully selected shelf-stable meals and drinks designed to keep the crew healthy and functioning in deep space, where there is no refrigeration, no resupply, and no room for culinary drama. The agency said Artemis II meals had to be safe, nutritious, easy to prepare in microgravity, and compatible with Orion's tight mass and volume limits. The crew also helped choose their food in advance, rating menu options before launch.

Among the most common items on the menu are tortillas, along with wheat flatbread, vegetable quiche, breakfast sausage, almonds, cashews, brisket, broccoli au gratin and macaroni and cheese.The four astronauts have access to 189 unique menu items during the mission.

Tortillas are not there as a novelty item, and they are definitely not space tacos waiting to happen, although that mental image is doing excellent work. They are there because tortillas solve one of spaceflight's oldest food problems: crumbs. NASA says food for missions like Artemis II must minimize crumbs and particulates in microgravity, where floating debris can interfere with equipment or get into astronauts' eyes and airways. Bread is messy in orbit. Tortillas are tidy, durable, and versatile.

That practicality has a Latino backstory. NASA says Mexican astronaut Rodolfo Neri Vela introduced tortillas to space menus during the 1985 STS-61B mission, and they have remained astronaut favorites ever since.

The agency notes that tortillas do not create the kind of dangerous crumbs regular bread does and can be used for multiple meals throughout a mission. In other words, one Mexican contribution to spaceflight culture is still orbiting through NASA's food strategy four decades later, now reaching all the way into the Artemis era.

That makes the tortilla one of the most quietly meaningful items aboard Artemis II. This is a mission built to test Orion's systems in deep space and pave the way for future lunar landings, but it also reflects how exploration is shaped by small human details, including what people eat when they leave Earth.

NASA says Artemis II's menu is far more advanced than Apollo's, which relied on early food technology and limited variety. Today's astronauts have beverages, warm meals, rehydratable foods and enough choice to make deep space feel a little less sterile.