Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent more than 520 days in space.
NASA
How do people eat in space? People on the International Space Station (ISS) can’t drop by the KFC for some chicken popcorn on Friday night. And the last time I checked that Uber Eats does not deliver to Mars.
Which begs the question: How does NASA plan to feed astronauts on a possible mission to Mars?
Glad you asked. Food scientists Grace L Douglas, Sara R Zwart, Scott M Smith from NASA recently published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition going into detail on the subject. Not all of their answers are yet, but they are working on identifying the key issues.
On the ISS, Astronauts choose 20% of their food. The remaining 80% comes from “a set of standard, generic foods”. This food is taken through renewable vehicles that provide fresh fruit and vegetables as well as food that can be stored in the long term. That’s literally not flying for a mission on Mars, so things are going to be more challenging.
NASA’s current strategy appears to be to focus on building a series of key tenets and its food strategy around them: Safety, sustainability, palatability, nutrition, resource reduction, mixing, reliability, and usability . Any food system created will usually require new appliances ready for space.
NASA is likely to address a number of different issues. A food system must be reliable, obviously, or people could die of hunger, but mixing is essential for a number of reasons – not just nutrition speaks for itself, but for the psychological health of the crew on board. Food must be brought on board, for obvious reasons, but NASA seems to believe that food will need to be grown on the ship as well. However, when that happens you sacrifice reliability. What if the food stops growing?
To help solve the problem, NASA is offering a $ 500,000 US prize through their “Deep Space Food Challenge”. Starting in January this year NASA is offering that money to anyone who can create a system that will help navigate all issues about feeding astronauts for the long haul.
And as with many of the innovations that NASA has supported over the years, this one could have a profound impact on the people left on Earth: “Solutions from the challenge could this will enable new avenues for food production around the world, “read the website,” especially in real environments, scarce areas of resources, and in new places such as urban areas and in places where disasters hamper critical infrastructure. “
Any ideas?