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There are no grocery stores on Mars, and resupply from Earth would take several months. As much food as future astronauts to the Red Planet may pack for the journey, they will inevitably have to make some of their own food in an inhospitable environment. It remains to be seen whether they will take the fictional farm-to-table route using locally sourced potatoes, like Matt Damon’s character did in 2015’s The Martian. But they may have a more scientifically advanced option.
Creating protein from thin air.
That’s the goal of a partnership between ESA and a company called Solar Foods, which formed out of a scientific research program less than a decade ago, and which will open its first large-scale production facility in 2024.
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The project, dubbed HOBI-WAN (“weightless hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria as a source of nutrition”) in reference to the Star Wars movies, is an extraterrestrial version of a process Solar Foods is already working on here on Earth. This effort involves growing the bacteria in a vessel containing water, air and nutrients, then drying the bacteria and turning them into a protein powder called Solen For human consumption.
The next major step will be testing solen production on the International Space Station.
“Providing a sustainable and nutritious food supply that meets the energy requirements of the crew is one of the greatest challenges in human spaceflight exploration beyond low Earth orbit,” the European Space Agency said in a report. Blog post. “In situations where pre-deployed food depots or continuous ground-based resupply missions are impractical, resource-intensive, or technically infeasible, cost-effective alternatives are needed.”
Solen starts out wet and then dries through a process that includes centrifugal force and spray drying.
Making protein powder from air
The main goal of the HOBI-WAN project is to determine whether the production of protein-rich powder can be done in microgravity conditions.
The process is complicated, but basically you let nature take its course.
“Solar Foods produces solenoid through a process called gaseous fermentation,” Arto Luckanen, the company’s senior vice president of space and defense, tells me. He says the gas fermentation process creates single-celled organisms that feed on hydrogen gas and use it to “sequester” carbon. From there, the bacteria are fed “minerals of life” such as ammonia as a source of nitrogen and hydrogen.
All the ingredients go into a bioreactor with water and gases pumped in “like a big SodaStream,” says Lukkanen. This provides the bacteria with the appropriate environment to reproduce, which they do very quickly. Once the bacteria multiply in sufficient quantity, they are harvested. Some of it is set aside to seed the next round in the bioreactor, while the rest is completely dried and pasteurized.
These dried and pasteurized bacteria form a solenoid product that consists of 78% protein, 6% fat (primarily unsaturated), 10% dietary fiber, 2% carbohydrates, and 4% mineral nutrients. The powder can be flavored in any number of ways and on its own imparts a “very mild umami flavor,” says Luukanen.
The HOBI-WAN project will head to the International Space Station to see if it is possible to make solen in space.
But can it work in space?
Solen would be more difficult to produce in space. The weightless environment, combined with the limited cargo capacity and low footprint of the bioreactor, add challenges that ESA and Solar Foods believe they can solve.
“The main (difference) of the experience on board the ISS is zero gravity, which means there is no buoyancy, which dramatically changes how liquids and gases behave,” says Lukkanen. Another challenge is limited physical space. Solar Foods uses bioreactors that can hold 20,000 liters or more, while the bioreactor destined for the International Space Station will be much smaller — “a few tens of litres.”
Additional steps will be required for gas safety, process monitoring, quality assurance and maintainability, as there will be no critical process engineers on board to look after the process. Also, a product made in space would not be dried into a powder, at least not on the International Space Station. In the event of a leak, a cloud of powder floating in a zero-gravity environment would not be ideal.
Therefore, in space, solen would most likely be served as a paste.
Sully is in his crushed form here on Earth. The space version will be more than just paste.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
The last big factor is the ingredients. These will have to be changed to account for the lack of resources available for long-duration spaceflight. Recycling has long been a staple of living in space, and this holds true for Solein production.
This means using the carbon dioxide produced by the crew’s breathing and recycling the hydrogen gas produced when the International Space Station uses electrolysis Converting water into oxygen For the crew. On Earth, making solenoid requires a lot of water.
There would also be alternatives, such as using urea instead of ammonia, because ammonia would be dangerous if an accident occurred. But this does not mean that astronauts will use urine as they do for…Recycled coffee“.
“On Earth, we use ammonia, but for the ESA project, we decided to use synthetic urea instead, mainly because it is not as dangerous as ammonia in the event of a leak,” says Lukkanen. “Recovering urea from urine is possible in principle, but given the small fraction of urea required, it may not make sense, especially if extracting urea from urine involves complex and heavy equipment.”
If the HOBI-WAN project is successful, it will help unleash long-term space exploration for humans, including a possible trip to Mars.
How long can this process feed astronauts?
A trip to Mars is a much larger time commitment than a trip to the moon. Next NASA Artemis II mission Astronauts will be seen orbiting the moon for the first time in nearly half a century, but the journey will only last 10 days. As far as food is concerned, it’s not that important. For missions like Escapade, where Two satellites will travel to MarsThe journey will take two years. When heading to the Red Planet, astronauts will need to pack more than just a picnic.
If the Solin project proves successful, the amount of food it produces could theoretically feed a team of astronauts for hundreds of days while using much less cargo space than today’s space meals. While designing the project, the only thing the astronauts will need to carry is mineral salts, and they won’t need much, says Lukkanen.
“Even for a crew of five, on a 900-day mission to Mars, we are talking about (less than) 100 kilograms of mineral salts,” he says.
Other technologies may also help recycle nitrogen and metals, allowing astronauts to reuse those materials on site, increasing the food supply.
Using protein powder, astronauts can make all kinds of food with the right additional ingredients. Solar Foods has developed recipes ranging from ice cream to cream cheese ravioli, Luukanen says. Some of them were presented during NASA’s Deep Space Food Challengewhich highlighted approaches to long-term food solutions, including a method of growing food without light called Nolux and a closed ecosystem that can autonomously grow food and preserve insects for use in astronauts’ diets.
This may not be what you’d expect from a Michelin-starred restaurant or even your local deli, but it’s probably better than a steady diet of baked potatoes grown on Mars.