What did the Incas and NASA have in common?

They both faced the problem of long journeys through harsh, forbidding territory. And remarkably, centuries before NASA’s quest for ways to feed astronauts in space, the Incas had already found the answer.

Their empire ran up and down the spine of the Andes, with a network of roads, terraced farms and breathtaking mountaintop outposts stretching the same distance as Stockholm to Cairo. They needed nourishing foods that traveled well and could be stored in bulk for a long time.

Enter chuño, one of the Incas’ discoveries that persists to this day.

Chuño (pronounced CHOON-yoh) is essentially freeze-dried potatoes, developed by a culture that had none of today’s food-processing technology. Villagers in the altiplano, the high tablelands of Bolivia and Peru, still make it the way the Incas did, using the warm days and frosty nights of June to repeatedly freeze and thaw the potatoes, and stomping them with their bare feet to remove the skins and liquids. Chuño can be stored and eaten for a decade after it has shrunken and dried.