Astronauts aboard China's space station have, for the first time, used an onboard oven to bake food in orbit, marking a significant upgrade to the "space kitchen."
The hot air oven, delivered by the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft, has allowed crew members of the Shenzhou-20 and Shenzhou-21 missions to enjoy freshly baked dishes like chicken wings and steak. This achievement represents a major step forward from simple reheating to actual cooking and baking in China's space program.
"We used high-temperature catalysis and multi-layer filtration technologies to enable smoke-free baking. Given the special conditions in orbit, we have made sure that the hot air oven is completely reliable and safe. Every part of the oven astronauts may touch remains cool so as to prevent burns," said Xuan Yong, a researcher at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center.
"We have built the range hood inside the oven, so it's a hot-air oven with built-in purification. It's the first-ever oven in the world that can actually be used aboard a space station," said Liu Weibo, deputy chief designer of astronaut system with China Astronaut Research and Training Center.
Engineers have also equipped the oven with a residue collector, heating mesh, baking tray, and rotating basket, solving the problem of food floating in zero gravity. They have also increased the maximum heating temperature from 100 to 190 degrees Celsius.
"By raising the temperature to 190 degrees Celsius, astronauts can now really cook in orbit. Previous food heating is purely physical warming, but this is actual cooking, with chemical reactions included. The food can now come out golden and crispy," said Liu.
The oven also has preset programs for different ingredients, such as corn, chicken wings, and cake.
"They can bake cakes, roast peanuts, or grill meat, and it's really delicious. This means astronauts can enjoy special meals on weekends, birthdays, or holidays. It greatly helps to enrich their dining experience and improves overall living conditions in orbit," Liu said.
Specially designed hot air oven allows Chinese astronauts to cook in orbit
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
