Investigating the possibility of using asteroid material to grow edible biomass for astronauts
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A team of engineers and planetary scientists at Western University's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, in Canada, has found that it might be possible to produce food for space travelers by feeding bacteria asteroid material, resulting in the growth of an edible biomass.
In their paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the group describes how they tested the idea by calculating how much asteroid material would be needed and what they found.
Prior research has shown that future spacecraft traveling to remote parts of the solar system or beyond could not possibly hold enough food to sustain astronauts. Such craft could not support the growth of enough food onboard, either.
In this new study, the researchers propose the idea of creating edible (and hopefully palatable) foods from bacteria grown by feeding on material retrieved from the surface of a nearby asteroid.
The idea is not totally new—researchers working on a DARPA project have been researching a similar approach to using the plastic containers that hold Meals Ready to Eat, as food for microbes that would grow into biomass.
A previous team had found that chopping up meteorites and using them as fertilizer for microbes had resulted in the microbes consuming the carbon material, and growing as a result. A finding that suggests early life on Earth may have been sustained in such a way.
The researchers then worked out how much asteroid material would be needed to sustain astronauts on long journeys. They used the asteroid Bennu, as their benchmark. Prior research has shown it is made of the kind of material that microbes could eat. The researchers found that if microbes consumed the entire asteroid, it could be used to make enough food to sustain one astronaut for 600 years in the worst case and 17,000 years in the best case.
The research team acknowledges that the idea of using asteroids as fertilizer for biomass production is still in its very early stages. They note that a lot of testing of such biomass would need to be done to make sure it would not be toxic, and that it would be palatable. They also note that the varying composition of asteroids would present additional challenges.
More information: Eric Pilles et al, How we can mine asteroids for space food, International Journal of Astrobiology (2024). DOI: 10.1017/S1473550424000119
Journal information: International Journal of Astrobiology
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