Mac and cheese could help us explore space Scientists have found a way to triple the shelf life of macaroni cheese — good news for Mars-bound astronauts

Space travel just got a lot more appetising. Washington State University scientists recently found a way to triple the shelf life of macaroni cheese. Meanwhile, lab-made meat and even fresh vegetables could soon be on astronauts’ menus. It’s a development that could make long space missions a good deal tastier.

Currently, plastic packaging can keep food safe at room temperature for up to 12 months in space and, incidentally, on Earth too – but the WSU researchers showed that they could make it last for three years, just in time for the upcoming first stage in the Nasa Moon to Mars mission.

It also has applications for the US Army, which wants to improve its “meals ready to eat” (MREs) for troops in the field. In taste tests by the military, the mac and cheese, eaten after three years’ storage, was deemed as good as the previous version stored for nine months.

The i newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

“We need a better barrier to keep oxygen away from the food and provide a longer shelf life, similar to aluminium foil and plastic laminate pouches,” WSU professor Shyam Sablani explains.

Cooking is psychologically beneficial to astronauts

Experiments in which astronauts are allowed to cook for themselves have already taken place with fairly positive results. Cooking with team-mates and freedom of choice over what to make are psychologically beneficial, although both take time and energy away from the mission.

Freeze-dried vegetables have been popular because they bounce back to something resembling their former veggie selves when you add them to hot water. Reconstituted mashed potato, made from potato flakes, also resembles the real deal.

Space food scientists can’t usually use traditional terrestrial food-preserving materials such as tin cans, because weight on spacecraft has to be kept to a minimum. The same applies to the armed forces, for whom everything has to be portable and light. But now an alternative option to keep food from spoiling is being examined by Nasa. It is of the grow-your-own variety.

“There comes a point where you have longer and longer duration missions, and you reach a cost benefit point where it makes sense to grow your own food,” says Howard Levine, chief scientist of Nasa’s Utilization and Life Sciences Office at the Kennedy Space Center.

Growing salad in space

An experiment currently under way aboard the International Space Station is looking into ways of growing salad and vegetables. In a collaboration with the company that makes Tupperware, researchers are testing different styles of growing containers in space. The PONDS experiment, which stands for Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System, involves a product that provides air and water to crops without using any extra power from the spacecraft itself.

Scientists can already grow lettuce using PONDS but are hoping to diversify into larger crops that require a lot more water. Eventually, they hope to have hydroponic growth labs that support the growth of vegetables, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, rice and beans during space missions.

And the final frontier, space meat, may now be within sight.

The printer that makes meat in micro-gravity

In a recent experiment on the International Space Station (ISS), a collaborative project involving ­Israeli company Aleph Farms, Russian laboratory 3D Bioprinting Solutions successfully “printed” edible meat by mimicking a natural process of muscle tissue regeneration occurring inside the cow’s body – but without the cow. On 26 September last year on the ISS, the team assembled live animal cells onto a small amount of muscle tissue in a 3D bioprinter, under micro-gravity conditions. The bioprinter created beef, rabbit and fish tissue that actually tasted the way those meats should taste.

Innovations created by Nasa have a way of entering everyday life eventually. Remember freeze-dried “spaceman” strawberries? A great 1980s stocking-filler. And astronaut ice cream is an innovation that has long since been finessed and popularised by Michelin-starred chefs, even though it only appeared on one space mission in 1968, aboard Apollo 7.

“Space ice cream was a special request for one of the Apollo missions,” Vickie Kloeris, manager of Nasa’s food tasting lab, has said. “It wasn’t that popular; most of the crew didn’t like it.”

Benefits for people, the planet and animals

On Earth, the implications for lab-created or 3D-printed meat are huge. If you can create meat in space, then you can do it on Earth, without having to use up lots of land, food and water to create a living breathing, methane-producing animal. This has benefits for people, the planet and animals. Projects like this could help feed communities in drought-hit or starving regions across the globe. Experiments on Earth in synthetically producing meat are aimed at feeding the rapidly growing population, predicted to reach 10 billion by 2050.

“The mission of providing access to high-quality nutrition any time, anywhere in a sustainable way is an increasing challenge for all humans,” says Jonathan Berger, CEO of The Kitchen which is an incubator for the food tech start-up Aleph Farms. “On Earth or up above, we count on innovators like Aleph Farms to take the initiative to provide solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as the climate crisis.”

Taste, the final frontier

While space meat tastes identical to animal meat, the development of space macaroni cheese is part of an elusive mission that Nasa hasn’t yet managed to crack: making comfort food that tastes exactly like it does on Earth. There are a number of factors affecting taste in space. Fresh fruit has to be cooked at an extremely high heat or irradiated in order to kill microorganisms and enzymes to make it safe to eat. Astronauts’ taste buds are sometimes dulled in space and sodium content has to be kept to a minimum to protect their bone density. This all leads to bland-tasting foods. Many astronauts have been known to bring their own little bottles of hot sauce on board to jazz up their space meals.

One radical solution that Nasa hasn’t yet considered might be to let those enzymes back in – allowing fermentation and letting microorganisms and mould breed is vital to creating flavour.

All the best foods: bread, yoghurt, cheese, cured meat, alcohol and pickles rely on a certain level of being left alone with oxygen and microbes. If Nasa could find a safe way to delivers these foods, meal times on board space craft could be a lot happier.

Space food: what’s on the menu?