Grow fresh food for astronauts and tourists thanks to farming in space. Farming in space, space agriculture.
Updated: 2024-02-24
Created: 2018-11-01
Status
Lots of experiments performed and planned. Small quantities tasted. NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge and overlap with terrestrial vertical farming has resulted in the popularity of this application. Advanced Plant Habitat onboard ISS. Lettuce grown on the ISS is as nutritious as Earth harvests.
Applications
- Fresh food for long term space missions.
- Psychological effect from surrounding plants and greenery.
- Microgravity enhanced genetic plant engineering for Earth.
- Year-round self-contained crop growing systems for Earth (vertical farming).
- More efficient food growing on Earth.
Why & Solution
Space gardening will be essential someday if space travelers are to go beyond low-Earth orbit or make more than a quick trip to the moon. They can’t carry on all the food they need, and the rations they do bring will lose nutrients. So astronauts will need a replenishable stash, with extra vitamins. They’ll also require ways to make more oxygen, recycle waste, and help them not miss home so much. Space gardens can, theoretically, help accomplish all of that.2
In order to improve astronauts’ well being on long-duration missions such as on a Moon base or on a mission to Mars, food plays an essential key role. Besides a source for nutrition, fresh food evokes through all the senses of smell, touch and taste memories of general happiness and home.1
The movement of heat, water vapor, CO2 and O2 between plant surfaces and their environment is also affected by gravity. In microgravity, these processes may also be affected by reduced mass transport and thicker boundary layers around plant organs caused by the absence of buoyancy dependent convective transport. Future space farmers will have to adapt their practices to accommodate microgravity, high and low extremes in ambient temperatures, reduced atmospheric pressures, atmospheres containing high volatile organic carbon contents, and elevated to super-elevated CO2 concentrations. Farming in space must also be carried out within power-, volume-, and mass-limited life support systems and must share resources with manned crews.3
Veggie and other systems aboard the space station are helping researchers figure out how radiation and lack of gravity affect plants, how much water is Goldilocks-good, and how to deal with deplorables like mold. Just as important, scientists are learning how much work astronauts have to put in, how much work they want to put in, and how plants nourish their brains as well as their bodies.2
Microgravity enhanced genetic plant engineering. In the low gravity environment of space, the transfer of genetic information from one kind of plant to another is enhanced due to lack of gravity induced buoyancy and convection effects.5
In 2020, NASA Selected Five Research Projects Designed to Improve Crop Habitats
In support of NASA’s goals for human exploration and sustained presence on the Moon and beyond, new spaceflight-based agriculture systems are needed to provide astronauts nutrition through freshly grown crop plants. NASA selected five teams of investigators to develop an improved water/nutrient delivery system and automated plant-spacing approaches for growing multiple generations of crop plants in spaceflight.
Through a combination of space biology science and engineering, the selected projects will develop, test and verify new concepts for water and nutrient delivery sub-systems. Scientists will also study and test approaches for automatically changing the spacing between the growing plants to enable research in very confined spacecraft environments. These are two key elements for developing plant habitats that are compatible with the microgravity condition of spaceflight and limited available space for crop plant production in spacecraft and lunar surface human habitats.
The following projects were selected for award:
- Design, monitoring and management approaches for the root-zone in microgravity.
- Microgravity crop production: Meeting the challenges of water/nutrient delivery, volume management, and providing diet diversity for the International Space Station.
- Evaluation of the porous tube and on-demand water and nutrient delivery systems for food production in microgravity.
- Staticaponics: Targeted electrostatic deposition of water and nutrients on plant roots.
- Variable plant spacing with astro garden nutrient delivery and recovery.
EneMiSInFood (Energy-efficient, Microwave-assisted Sterilisation of In- Space Food) is one of the winners of Space Exploration Masters and it is a microbiological safety solution for food produced in space. It uses a highly energy-efficient and compact technology to deactivate and destroy microorganisms that could degrade the quality, taste, and edibility of this biomass. The EneMiSInFood system could be used by astronauts in orbit for the microbiological deactivation of both food and food waste, as well as for microwave cooking in a future implementation. The most important value offered by the system is the compact, energy-efficient deactivation and destruction of microorganisms on space-grown food, which can enable storage without active refrigeration. The technology could also be transferred to energy-poor households/cases.
Companies
Air Protein page at Factories in Space
Air Protein is a modern meat company, crafting the world’s first air meat to feed us sustainably,
Air Protein™ is on a mission to feed our growing population with foods made from air-based protein.
- Using a proprietary probiotic production process, the protein found in air-based meat is a new form of sustainable protein created from elements found in the air we breathe and it has an amino acid profile comparable to meat protein.
- This process can make food in a matter of hours not months, and independently from weather conditions and seasons. This revolutionary new protein source will result in the most sustainable meat on the planet.
Air Protein is pioneering a new category of food production - air-based protein - a solution to feed our growing population without the strain on natural resources. The revolutionary technology that Air Protein leverages has been profiled on the TED stage and recognized by Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
These are natural single-cell organisms that act like plants in the way in which they convert carbon dioxide into food. Air Protein, a Kiverdi spin-off company, has created the world’s first air-derived meat using this method.
Aleph Farms page at Factories in Space
"In space, we don’t have 10,000 or 15,000 litres of water available to produce 1kg of beef," said Mr Toubia. “We are proving that cultivated meat can be produced anytime, anywhere, in any condition.”
Unlike 3D printing technology, our 3D bioprinting technology is the printing of actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak.
AlgaBloom International page at Factories in Space
A Programmable Microalgae Cultivation Platform for Sustainable Food Production in Space.
Alginity page at Factories in Space
Autonomous food and oxygen supply at a lunar base.
The extreme demands of space will provide a great starting point for a new kind of bioreactor that can be used (following optimisation) for the pigment market, where the demand for high-value elements is currently undersupplied.
ASCENT Technology page at Factories in Space
Ascent Technology is a boutique research and development firm in Boulder, Colorado.
Awake Aerospace page at Factories in Space
Make the inner solar system more accessible.
- Agriculture, mining, tourism, manufacturing and long-term human habitation.
- With a keen focus on Venus and enabling O'Neill structures.
- Help develop and exercise ability in order to dynamically scale the operations (if and when needed).
- Assist global military operations with mega-engineering projects. Including but not limited to: Asteroid defense (deflect/attack/other) system, shielding from a potential solar storm. As well, help develop safeguard against other larger scale (potential) disruptions.
Bake In Space page at Factories in Space
- Phase 1: Bake. Aug 2020. Demonstrate the baking of various crumb-free food items and bread samples through a space-ready oven.
- Phase 2: Knead. Sep 2020. Demonstrate the kneading of flour with water to create raw dough in microgravity.
- Phase 3: Grind. Jul 2021. Demonstrate the grinding of grain to flour in microgravity.
- Phase 4: Harvest. Sep 2021. Demonstrate the harvesting and separation of plant and grain in microgravity.
- Phase 5: Grow. Jul 2022. Demonstrate the growth of grain to create a regular supply of grain for three bread rolls.
- Baking to Cooking. Jan 2023. Other food experiments related to cooking and baking in microgravity.
Bake In Space was a startup that sought to "address the scientific and technical challenges relating to the production of fresh food in space in order to improve the wellbeing and comfort of humans travelling beyond Low Earth Orbit."
- In order to improve astronauts’ well being on long-duration missions such as on a Moon base or on a mission to Mars, food plays an essential key role. Besides a source for nutrition, fresh food evokes through all the senses of smell, touch and taste memories of general happiness and home.
- Our initial goal is to conduct a series of technology demonstrations related to the production of fresh bread aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This entails recreating the value chain from growing grain to baking bread in micro-gravity. The experiment is split up into 5 phases, which will be realised on future astronaut missions to the ISS in order to advance our goal of food self-sustainability in space. Bake in Space will generate commercialisable spin-offs that will benefit us here on Earth.
BeeHex page at Factories in Space
BeeHex is a NASA spin-off company. The founder worked on a project to develop a 3D Food Printer system that can personalize food for astronauts during long-duration space missions.
Blue Horizon page at Factories in Space
Creation of biological soil crusts (BSC) through spraying biomatrix on deserted land. BSC will become the basis for arable land / local food production and forest plantations.
3D printing from renewable resources for future deep space missions.
M4PM Project
Canacompost Systems page at Factories in Space
The Outpost: Space Composting With Black Soldier Flies. Phase 1 winner of Canada Deep Space Food Challenge.
CemVita Factory page at Factories in Space
Our technology offers a state-of-the-art versatile and self-regenerative system for producing many of the necessary substances for human planetary exploration including nutrients and pharmaceutics.
Connectomix page at Factories in Space
Develop a food production system for the Moon that will benefit Earth.
Cosmic Eats page at Factories in Space
Cosmic Eats is one of 18 teams to win Phase One of the competition.
"Our concept is a food production system that can be used onboard spacecraft," Shah explained. "So, our production system consists of three modules that are based on growing plants, growing algae, and growing fungi.
You can have a cosmic taco that's made out of plants, algae, and fungi," Shah added. "So, combined in a way to make a really cool, very nutritious, and very interesting food product for crew members or you can make a cosmic smoothie."
Ecoation Innovative Solutions page at Factories in Space
Enigma of the Cosmos page at Factories in Space
Growth Systems. Leafy & Microgreen Food production system with an adaptive growing platform using telescopic grow channel system to support plants natural growth cycle, increasing efficiency of the growing space by adjusting the grow area according to the plants needs and in return increasing the efficiency by a minimum of 40%.
Explaneta Space page at Factories in Space
- It’s main aim is not to produce additions to the crew’s meal plan or conduct scientific experiments; the greenhouse is designed to allow each crew member their very own green space, to tend to at their leisure and harvest the psychological benefits.
- GREEN//CASE can be set up in private quarters with minimum space requirements or taken along on long rover journeys. While big-scaled greenhouses can support the habitat’s life support systems and food generation, GREEN//CASE works to raise habitability in personal quarters and help the astronauts to maintain important emotional balance.
Far Out Foods page at Factories in Space
Growth Systems. The Exo-Garden is a nearly closed-loop self-contained food production system, which is capable of producing a variety of fresh mushrooms and hydroponic vegetables.
Interstellar Lab page at Factories in Space
Sustainable cultivation solutions on Earth and regenerative life-support in space.
- LOW EARTH ORBIT - MISSION BLOOM 2025
- LOW EARTH ORBIT - NUCLEUS 2026
- MOON - MISSION LITTLE PRINCE 2026
- MOON - MOONPOD 2028
- MARS - EBIOS 2030
A few years from now, we will able to send a BabyDome to Mars… Interstellar Lab's BioPod prepares for plant cultivation on the Moon. The unique creation is an inflatable environmentally controlled plant cultivation pod with a resilient and modular design that is intended to go beyond the earth’s surface.
- Growth Systems. NUCLEUS is a modular bioregenerative system that produces fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects to provide micronutrients for long-term space missions. It combines several autonomous phytotrons to create a self-sustaining food production system that minimizes water, air, and nutrient inputs.
NUCLEUS
NUCLEUS paves the way towards permanent settlements in space or vertical farming solutions on Earth.
Kernel Deltech page at Factories in Space
Growth Systems. The Kernel Food Production System is an autonomous device that produces an inactivated fungal biomass from well-defined starting materials. It achieves biomass production by using a continuous cultivation technique adaptable to low-gravitational conditions where the culture variables are tightly controlled to maximize biomass yield and product safety.
Mission: Space Food (Astreas) page at Factories in Space
Combining Space and Food Science Technology with Experiential Design to Fuel Cosmic Exploration. Mission: Space Food is a consortium of space, food and technology experts creating an integrative approach to human nutrition in space.
Mission: Space Food is inventing the technology to enable multi-sensory pleasure of food in weightlessness, making meals more enticing and healthy for space crews.
In space, astronauts' senses of smell and taste are impeded, meaning that even recipes they typically love on earth tend to taste bland in zero gravity. More pleasurable food experiences can have important benefits for astronauts' overall wellbeing, health, and for collaboration among them.
To address this gap, Mission: Space Food is leveraging food science to develop the recipes and food technology to create enticing meals and snacks for astronauts.
Redefining the multi-sensory pleasure of food in space. Scientific solutions to build healthy eating habits for life.
We're a food innovation company redefining the modern diet by creating next-generation products that don't compromise between great taste & nutrition.
NASA Deep Space Food Challenge
Phase 1 US winner receiving $25,000 from NASA.
Bio Culture. The project builds upon the proven and reliable pre-packaged food system but also leveraging the exciting new prospects of food production in space. The project will cultivate meat from pluripotent stem cells using cell cryopreservation and bioreactor. This method would allow crew to produce meat with almost x1,000 less inputs compared to pasture-based cattle farming. The system can be adapted to grow other meats such as pork or lamb, further expanding the choice of food proposed.
Astreas Delivers Cognitive-Boosting Chocolate Truffles to International Space Station, 2024-05-15
- Astreas, a start-up focused on enhancing human performance through functional food for astronauts and elite performers, has successfully delivered its brain-boosting chocolate truffles to the International Space Station, with SpaceX Crew-8's launch on March 4th, 2024.
- Astreas Spheres were dispatched to the ISS Expedition 71 crew as part of Astreas' efforts to help improve astronauts' cognitive and physical performance in space, underscoring their dedication to refining its offerings through continuous innovation.
- Astreas will fine-tune its products' flavor and nutritional value, by engaging with the astronauts to help meet their missions' intense physical and cognitive demands.
Nolux page at Factories in Space
Bioculture / Hybrid. An artificial photosynthetic system that is capable of producing plant- and fungal-based foods independent of biological photosynthesis.
Orbital Farm page at Factories in Space
What types of Foods?
Plants
We will aim to grow all types of foods. As we look to build farms around the world, we can't just grow lettuce and basil. We must develop systems which can grow all types of crops, from rice to corn and even medicinal and nutraceutical plants. We need to develop climate independent growing systems to preserve all types of foods. Not all will begin today but each project we develop will have a uniqueness from the area of which it can contribute to the global knowledge pool.
Seafood
Fish play an important role in our ecosystems as they are one of the most efficient converters of feed into food with healthy proteins and useful oils. In addition to a source of protein, the fish provide the nitrogen our plants require in the greenhouses.
Vegan Proteins
We will produce proteins in many forms, from Salmon and Trout to shrimp, to single cell proteins which can be blended into protein rich breads, pastas, or even using high moisture extrusion to be made into burgers and sausages. We will produce animal and fish feed products which will help to save the oceans from the fishmeal and fishing industries which aid in collapsing ocean ecosystems.
Cellular Agriculture
We will produce the nutrients which will enable the cellular agriculture industry to thrive, scale and grow.
Redwire page at Factories in Space
Space Food
Space infrastructure company Redwire Corporation will develop the only commercially owned and operated spaceflight-qualified plant growth platform in space, the so called Redwire Greenhouse, the company said. The platform is expected to launch to the ISS in spring 2023.
REDWIRE GREENHOUSE Product Description.
Science Missions
Sierra Space (Sierra Nevada Corp, SNC) page at Factories in Space
Space Food
In March of 2014, Veggie, a modularly designed vegetable production plant growth unit, developed and built in partnership with Sierra Space and Kennedy Space Center, was integrated by NASA aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This system provided sufficient lighting for plant growth making it possible for to successfully grow red romaine lettuce. After a safety analysis in 2015, U.S. astronauts were able to eat fresh produce for the first time on-orbit.
Solar Foods page at Factories in Space
Natural protein production anywhere by using air and electricity.
Manufactured Food. Single-cell protein production by means of gas fermentation.
- With missions that go beyond LEO and the Moon, a small-scale Solein production unit moves from a cost-saving procedure to the realm of possibilism.
- A flight to Mars would take at least seven months, plus another seven months for the return trip (and that’s in optimal conditions). Any mission would need a way to produce food during the flight: taking more than a year’s worth of food for a crew of six quickly runs into the limitations of storage space. Instead of filling the cargo bay with foodstuffs and water, it makes sense to launch things that can only be produced on Earth – anything else is a waste of precious cargo capacity. A Solein production unit could solve these challenges.
SolSys Mining page at Factories in Space
We are developing systems for beneficiation of raw materials to enable agriculture, construction and production in space. Space Resource Beneficiation & Exo-agriculture systems.
Resource Processing
We are developing systems for beneficiation of raw materials to enable agriculture, construction and production in space. Transporting materials from Earth into space has a high cost, and to enable future missions and settlements in space resources already in space should be utilized when possible. To use resources that already exist in space, new technologies for comminution, screening, sorting and separation will have to be developed.
Agriculture Systems
We are researching the use of lunar regolith for plant nutrients in space agriculture. Growing plants for food and oxygen in space will be critical for future long-term missions to the moon. Many valuable plant nutrients already exist in lunar regolith, and we are developing systems for extracting these nutrients to use for hydroponic agriculture. In addition we have developed our own 3d-printed hydroponic growth systems.
Space Bread page at Factories in Space
Hope Hersh has her sights set on something out of this world—freshly baked bread for astronauts.
Space Lab Technologies page at Factories in Space
- µG-LilyPond™ - Growth Chamber for Microgravity
- MarsOasis® - Martian Greenhouse
- The Exploration Spacesuit - or Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU)
- Space Architecture
Space Crop Production Systems
Space Lab® Café is a compact vertical farm that continuously produces a variety of nutritious produce with minimal water, power, waste or processing time. It operates with or without gravity, in a Lunar, Martian or spacecraft habitat, while providing farm-to-table solutions for Earth’s urban centers or remote, harsh environments.
Space Lab LEAF Experiment Selected for Artemis III Lunar Mission
Space V (Space-V, SpaceV) page at Factories in Space
Space V is an innovative start-up, a spin-off of the University of Genoa; it owns the international patents of the “Adaptive Multilayer Greenhouse” (AMG) architecture, which holds the promise of greatest efficiency in producing fresh vegetable food in space settlements.
SpaceV stands for Space Vegetables or Space Veg in short.
- VAGF uses LED lighting, automation systems, and precision irrigation to create an optimal growing environment for crops. LED lighting systems are much more energy-efficient than traditional HPS lighting systems, reducing energy consumption by up to 40% compared to traditional greenhouses. Precision irrigation systems can reduce water consumption by up to 90% compared to traditional greenhouses.
- VAGF allows astronauts to grow crops in a controlled environment, which reduces the risk of crop failure due to space conditions. This helps to ensure a reliable and sustainable food supply for long-term missions.
- VAGF also offers a space-efficient solution for agriculture. Vertical stacking of crops in VAGF maximizes the use of available space in space stations, making it an ideal solution for space agriculture.
Space Zab (SpaceZab) page at Factories in Space
Beyond our main technology, our experience and connections allow us to launch the payload design/research service as our side product. This provides opportunities for other companies and research institutes to work with us on space missions. We also provide on-ground simulated microgravity experiment for advanced researches using in-house designed clinostat or random positioning machine. (CS-01)
We have developed advance technologies for space exploration. Our flagship product is the novel liquid/semi-liquid 3D printer for edible and non-edible materials for space, which take into account the micro-gravity effect on materials. Our technology will allow for the fabrication of precision/personalized food and medicine in space.
Space Naem
Clinostat
3D Space Food Printer
The future of consumption. In the future, no matter how far into space we are, human biology would remain quite the same; we still need to eat. But food isn’t as easy to access in space. So what if we can create food from raw nutrients and 3D print them in space. We can add any flavours, medicine, and nutrients that are all completely personalized to your needs and likings.
This idea -now made into real prototype- earned us awards and recognition from National Space Exploration (NSE), GISTDA, NSTDA, and Chinese Space Expiration Organization.
Strauss Group page at Factories in Space
The experiment, which houses a miniature greenhouse that can be controlled remotely.
Zero G Kitchen page at Factories in Space
A Platform for Food Development in Space. Vision is to build a full kitchen suite in space.
Earthly Solution Risk
Grown in space and consumed in space to save on launched mass and many other benefits.