Space Commander Has Cake, Eats it Too

The space shuttle Discovery may be installing a massive 16-ton solar power plant at the International Space Station today, but its astronaut crew also packed something a little sweeter for the orbiting lab?s veteran commander.

Discovery skipper Lee Archambault made sure his crew packed away a small chocolate cake in the spacecraft?s cupboards for NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, who celebrated his 42nd birthday last Saturday - a day before the shuttle launched.

?We had a stowaway, very chocolate-y cake,? shuttle astronaut John Phillips radioed Mission Control late Wednesday while beaming down some video. ?The crew does have some chocolate fans, so they were glad to see some fresh chocolate.?

Chocolate is a luxury on the space station, chocolate cake even more so. NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus, who has lived on the station since November, told SPACE.com that she made a special request for extra chocolate when a Russian cargo ship launched to the outpost last month.

Archambault said he and his crew sang a belated ?Happy Birthday? to Fincke after they arrived at the station on Tuesday while the station commander somersaulted in weightlessness. Fincke has lived aboard the station since last October and will return to Earth next month.

?Eventually, the song ended and we got that cake open,? said Archambault, who also handed out matching crew shirts to Fincke, Magnus and their third crewmate, Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

Phillips said Fincke?s birthday cake was baked by fellow NASA astronaut Marsha Ivins. It was rich and tasty, fairly crumbly in zero gravity until the astronauts started taking bigger, more put-together pieces, he said.

With their makeshift party over, the 10 astronauts aboard Discovery and the International Space Station will perform the first of three spacewalks planned for their mission later today.

Discovery astronauts are replacing a member of the station?s three-person crew and delivering a $298 million set of solar wings, the last major American-built piece of the orbital laboratory, during their 13-day mission.

SPACE.com is providing continuous coverage of STS-119 with reporter Clara Moskowitz and senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for mission updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.

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