Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Nasa

Make Alcohol From an Astronaut’s Breath? Yep. Here Are the Finalists For Phase 2 of the Deep Space Food Challenge

This week, NASA’s ability to keep astronauts fat and happy on a mission to Mars took another giant leap forward for mankind.

That’s because the U.S. space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), announced the 11 finalists for Phase 2 of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition designed to help explore and better understand how these agencies can feed humans in space.

The second phase of the competition kicked off in January 2022, and both new teams and previous Phase 1 winners were challenged to build small-scale prototypes of their ideas. Dozens of teams developed prototypes to use minimal resources, creating little waste, and producing safe, healthy, and tasty foods for astronauts.

The judging panel, which featured experts from academia, industry, and government, evaluated submissions on various criteria such as design innovation, scientific and technical approach, and the feasibility of their design.

The following U.S. companies were selected as finalists:

  • InFynity (Chicago, Illinois) is utilizing fungi protein to prepare nutritious and delicious foods.
  • Nolux (Riverside, California) is producing plant- and fungal-based food using artificial photosynthesis.
  • Mu Mycology (Hillboro, Oregon) uses a closed-loop mushroom cultivation system allowing for scalable growth of various edible mushrooms.
  • Kernel Deltech USA (Cape Canaveral, Florida) produces inactivated fungal biomass using a continuous cultivation technique.
  • Interstellar Lab (Merritt Island, Florida) produces fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects to provide micronutrients for long-term space missions.
  • Far Out Foods (St. Paul, Minnesota) developed a nearly closed-loop food production system called the Exo-Garden that is capable of producing a variety of mushrooms and hydroponic vegetables.
  • SATED (Boulder, Colorado), or Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient, & Delicious, cooks a variety of well-known foods from long-shelf-life ingredients.
  • Air Company (Brooklyn, New York) developed a system that captures carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts, combined with hydrogen made with water electrolysis, to produce alcohol that is then fed to an edible yeast to make proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

In addition to these U.S. companies, the NASA and the CSA recognized three international finalist teams from outside the U.S. and Canada:

  • Enigma of the Cosmos (Melbourne, Australia) created a food production system with an adaptive growing platform that could increase efficiency by at least 40%.
  • Solar Foods (Lappeenranta, Finland) uses gas fermentation to produce single-cell proteins.
  • Mycorena (Gothenburg, Sweden) developed a circular production system utilizing a mix of microalgae and fungi, resulting in a microprotein using minimal resources while generating minimal waste.

The top 5 U.S. companies will be recognized as Phase 2 challenge winners, each awarded $150,000. In addition, up to three top-scoring international teams will be recognized as Phase 2 challenge winners. The winners of Phase 2 are scheduled to be announced in April 2023.

Looking at the finalists, it’s clear the big winner was…fungi. Six of the final eight finalists have built systems that create fungi in some form or another. But maybe the most intriguing system chosen by NASA is from Brooklyn’s Air Company, which has technology that can convert an astronaut’s breath into alcohol, which is then used as feed media for an edible yeast that produces proteins, fats, and carbs. As it turns out, the company’s technology can also produce vodka, which I’m thinking might just come in handy during a long-term space flight.

Fungi Protein Heading to Space Station Aboard SpaceX to Test Viability as Astronaut Food

Back in 2012, researchers exploring the thermal springs of Yellowstone National Park happened upon a hearty new microbe called Fusarium strain flavolapis. Having survived the acidic volcano springs of Yellowstone meant the microbe, a fungus, might just survive in a challenging environment like outer space.

That was the theory, but researchers will soon know how Fusarium flavolapis performs 254 miles above earth as the fungi heads to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s 25th cargo mission for NASA on Friday, June 10th. The fungi will go to space as part of NASA’s EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), under a project where Montana State University, BioServe Space Technologies, and a startup called Nature’s Fynd will test how it performs and see if it could be used as a source of food for astronauts. 

The fungi, now better known by its commercial name of Fy, was initially isolated by Dr. Mark Kozubal under a research program funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. Kozubal would go on to found Nature’s Fynd as part of an effort to commercialize Fy as a complete protein that could be used in plant-based meat and dairy substitutes. Earlier this year, Fy made its way to market as part of a series of consumer products that includes meatless breakfast sausage and dairy-free cream cheese

As Nature’s Fynd worked to develop Fy into new consumer-facing products, the company continued to work with NASA under their Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, which had opened a call for microbial biomanufacturing technologies in space. Nature’s Fynd worked with researchers from Montana State University to build a bioreactor prototype that could grow FY in microgravity environments like the International Space Station (ISS). And earlier this year, Nature’s Fynd, MSU, and Bioserve Space Technology, a Center within the University of Colorado Bouldertechnologies, received a grant under NASA’s EPSCoR to test the bioreactor in space.

One of the reasons Fy is so attractive as a potential food source for astronauts is it’s a source of complete protein, meaning it has all nine of the necessary amino acids humans need as part of their diet. It’s also a source of net new protein, meaning – unlike pea or animal protein – it isn’t simply a protein that’s been converted from one source to another. In space, efficiency is the name of the game, and Fy’s ability to create protein without an intermediary makes it a promising new candidate to feed long-term space travelers. Starting this Friday, researchers will soon know whether Fy will live up to that promise.

This project is one of many being funded by NASA as part of its effort to develop sources of food for long-term space travel. Earlier this year, the space agency announced $1 million in prize money for Phase 2 of its Deep Space Food Challenge, a NASA Centennial challenge that aims to foster innovation around sustainable food production technologies or systems that require minimal resources and produce minimal waste. The space agency has also experimented with baking cookies and printing pizzas in microgravity environments.

NASA Is Growing Chile Peppers In Space

Astronauts onboard the International Space Station are aiming to grow the first-ever peppers in space via the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment. PH-04 will grow “Espanola Improved” New Mexico Hatch Green Chiles. These are a medium-heat chile peppers NASA says have been suitable for use in controlled growing environments.

The pepper seeds were planted in April of this year and sent to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s 22nd Commercial Refueling Services (CRS-22) mission. Astronauts will grow the plants for four months in the Space Station’s “advanced plant habitat” (APH), which contains more than 180 sensors and can regulate temperature, moisture levels, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. NASA says the growth habitat is “mostly autonomous” and that it sends data from the sensors to scientists on the ground at Kennedy Space Center.

The PH-04 experiment is meant to help NASA in enabling long-duration deep-space exploration, for which adequate food supply is needed. Peppers are a good source of nutrients and could be used supplement astronauts’ packaged food, according to NASA. PH-04 will also monitor whether elements like texture and flavor change when the peppers are grown in space. NASA notes that the whole experiment may also be able to inform the processes for growing peppers via traditional outdoor agriculture as well as through indoor farming.

Another goal of the project is to create an indoor grow system that needs little input from the astronauts themselves, since they would not have the time to devote to growing plants that those of us on Earth would.

There’s a growing interest from multiple different countries to develop new novel concepts for feeding people in space. The PH-04 joins a growing list initiatives, including 3D-printed pizzas, tomatoes, and cell-based steaks, that have been researched or tested. 

NASA Harvest Partners with CropX to Combine Soil Monitoring and Satellite Data

NASA’s Food Security and Agriculture Program, NASA Harvest, and soil analytics company CropX announced a partnership today that will provide insights into soil conditions around the planet to support more sustainable agriculture with higher yields.

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the CropX platform combines hardware sensors that are screwed into the ground with a cloud-based analytics platform. The combined hardware and software analyzes soil moisture, temperature and salinity to help farmers better manage watering and fertilizer application.

The partnership with NASA Harvest will combine CropX’s earthbound technology with NASA’s network of Earth-observing satellites. By marrying underground data with aerial imagery and information, NASA Harvest plans to provide new insights around soil health to governments and farmers around the world.

According to a press release emailed to The Spoon, NASA has already deployed CropX technology across a group of alfalfa farms in Arizona. Over a year-long pilot program that integrates NASA satellite data and synthetic aperture radar, NASA Harvest will be able to establish parameters for water usage estimates, yield prediction, soil quality and land usage assessment based on crop growing cycles.

The race is on to figure out how the world will sustainably feed 9 billion people by the year 2050. Thankfully there are a number of startups tackling the problem from a number of different angles. Companies like Apeel are helping extend the shelf life of products. There is an entire sector of cell-based meat startups working to feed us cultured protein instead of devoting so many resources to raising animals. And partnerships like the one between CropX and NASA Harvest can help spur the adoption of more precision agriculture to reduce waste in the growing process.

Scientists in Antarctica Grow Food Without Soil or Sunlight — Get Ready, Mars

Astronauts, you had better like salad.

AP News reported last week that a team of scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station III in Antarctica had successfully grown their first crop of produce without any soil, sunlight, or pesticides. The goal of the project was to explore food growing methods for use on outer space missions.

In total the researchers harvested eight pounds of salad greens, including swiss chard, 18 cucumbers, and 70 radishes — enough for quite the veg-heavy feast. And this crop just the beginning. The German Aerospace Center said last Thursday that its scientists hope to harvest up to 11 pounds of produce per week by May.

The vegetables were grown inside a shipping container, which arrived in the Antarctic in January of 2018. The plants are grown through aeroponics, a method of cultivation that doesn’t require soil or sunlight. Instead, plants receive nutrients via a liquid (made of nutrient solution and filtered water piped into the greenhouse) sprayed onto their roots, and bask in LED lights in air that’s enriched with CO2. The growing system and greenhouse are part of the “Eden ISS” project, in association with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Aeroponic farming is beginning to enter the home and specialty food markets, thanks to startups like Grove and AeroFarms. Since they rely on aeroponic mists and LED lights instead of sunlight and soil, these growing systems can support produce throughout the entire year, and in variable weather conditions. Including, apparently, the -20 °C (-4 °F) chill of Antarctica.

The Eden greenhouse. Photo: DLR via Flickr

This successful first harvest is a boost for scientists researching ways to grow produce on interplanetary missions where astronauts would be confined to tight quarters for several years. NASA already grew lettuce on the International Space Station earlier this year, but there are only so many salads you can eat before monotony sets in. This update from Antarctica shows that astronauts could replicate this growing system in space and cultivate a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in their ships  — and possibly, someday, even on Mars or the Moon.

NASA estimates that four crew members would need 24,000 pounds of food to sustain themselves on a three-year journey to Mars. Which can get very heavy and take up a lot of space. NASA is already working on light, durable packaging for interplanetary missions, but with a viable aeroponic system, they might not have to pack quite so much. Astronauts could grow at least a portion of their food on their ship, which would lighten the load (since there’s no soil required) and also give them access to fresh produce. Because freeze-dried ice cream must get old after a while.

This isn’t the only technology that might give astronauts more culinary options in space. The Japanese company Open Meals is working towards teleporting food through digitization and connected 3D bioprinters. If they reach their goal, astronauts could theoretically be snacking on tuna nigiri (or whatever else tickled their fancy) while orbiting the red planet. At least for now, though, they’ll have to settle for salad. Lots and lots of salad.

NASA and the Army are Developing the Future of Food Packaging

When I was a kid, my dad, who was in the military, showed me an MRE (meal ready to eat). To my impressionable young eyes, it was like looking at food from the future. MREs have come a long way since then, and two separate projects from NASA and the Department of Defense could show us the future of food packaging tech that will one day reach store shelves.

Mars is a long ways off and last I checked, there were no bodegas to pop in at along the way. That’s why NASA is creating new ways to store food to keep it from spoiling over the course of its planned three-year mission to Mars sometime in the 2030’s. WIRED UK has a great write up of the work the space agency is doing to prepare for the journey.

Food scientists at NASA need to think of ways of preventing food from spoiling or making astronauts sick, all while ensuring the food maintains its nutritional value, caloric levels and taste. Oh, and by the way, it can’t take up too much space given the cramped quarters of a spaceship. To achieve this, NASA is experimenting with different ways of freeze drying, thermostabilizing (blasting with heat in a sterile environment), and new types of moisture and oxygen resistant packaging.

Closer to home, Food Business News wrote about how the Department of Defense has a Combat Feeding Directorate that comes up with ways for food to travel and survive in harsh conditions. Because these ruggedized meals are carried by soldiers, this food packaging must also be compact and lightweight. During a recent talk at the Future Food-Tech conference, Stephen Moody, director of the Combat Feeding Directorate, said that food for the military has to withstand high altitudes as well as extreme hot and cold temperatures. He told the audience that “our products are required to last for three years in 80 degrees Fahrenheit and six months at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”

While these food packaging projects are limited to military and space applications right now, there’s a good chance breakthrough technology developed by these agencies will eventually wind up on our store shelves. These new types of packaging could possibly improve food safety during transportation to deliver aid to remote places, or help reduce food waste by extending shelf lives.

At the very least, perhaps we’ll get our hands on the technology that finally gave the Army shelf-stable, combat-ready pizza for MREs.

FarmBot Nasa

FarmBot Wants to Cultivate an Open-Source Future for Remote Farming

“Farm from anywhere” is a phrase we’re likely to hear more and more of as technology enables easier access to fresh, locally grown food. We just wrote about Babylon Micro-Farms, a remote, hydroponic farm you can keep inside your living room. There’s also a healthy urban farming market: thanks to companies like Farmshelf and Smallhold, restaurants, schools, and the average consumer get better access to fresh food and more involved in the food production itself.

But no one’s tackled the reinvention of farming quite like the folks at FarmBot.

FarmBot is basically precision agriculture for the people. When he launched the FarmBot project in 2011, founder Rory Aronson wanted to find a way to bring the benefits of remote farming to the everyman without the hefty price tag.

Precision agriculture normally involves technology like self-steering tractors and aerial drones that can make better use of resources. Because the method uses real-time data to understand weather, air quality, labor costs, and other factors, growers can make smarter decisions about how much and how often to employ resources. As its name suggests, precision agriculture provides meticulous records of every single step of the growing process.

Historically, it’s been the territory of industrial farmers. But thanks to Aronson, anyone with a little space and (considerably less) cash can get involved in food production.

Both FarmBot products, made up of cartesean coordinate robots along with software and documentation, can work on rooftops, in backyards, and can accommodate both small- and large-scale farming operations. It’s unclear whether the company means “farm from anywhere” literally, as it says on its website. But considering the highly customizable nature of the product, anyone with some tech know-how could theoretically hack the bot and make it work in any given climate.

A visual interface lets you “plan your garden like a videogame,” according to the company’s website. So the fact that the interface looks a bit like FarmVille is no coincidence. You can drag and drop plants into the virtual plot of land (below), build care regiments, and even scare away birds.

After the garden is planned, the machine plants seeds, measures soil moisture content and water, and can detect and destroy weeds. Email alerts tell a user when the crops are ready for harvest.

It’s also open source, including the hardware, software, and documentation. That means all design files, source code, and hardware specs are available for free on the company’s website, so anyone can customize their farm without having to fork over a bunch of extra money.

Right now, the FarmBot Genesis goes for $2,595 via the company’s website. The FarmBot Genesis XL, which is available for preorder, costs $3,295 and covers “421 percent the area of for just 38% more cost.” Shipments of both machines are expected to go out in May of this year.

Aronson would eventually like to get the price point down to $1,000. It’s unclear whether that will happen soon or if it’s some ways off. Meanwhile, FarmBot is making its way into universities and non-profits, and the company is working with NASA to develop open-source food production on Mars, the Moon, and deep space. Remote farming indeed.

All images courtesy of FarmBot.