Mission to boldly grow food in space labs blasts off

Astronauts might soon eat steak, mashed potatoes, and desserts grown from single cells in space—if a new experiment launched today works.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is testing whether lab-grown food can be made in space, where there’s less gravity and more radiation than on Earth.

This research could help lower the high cost of feeding astronauts, which can be as much as £20,000 a day.

The team says this is just the first step. In about two years, they hope to build a small food-making lab on the International Space Station.

Dr. Aqeel Shamsul, head of Frontier Space, is working with scientists at Imperial College London. He says lab-grown food is key if NASA wants humans to live on other planets.

“Our goal is to build factories in space and on the Moon,” he told the BBC. “We need to make things in space if we want people to live and work there.”

Lab-grown food involves growing food ingredients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrates in test tubes and vats and then processing them to make them look and taste like normal food.

Lab-grown chicken is already on sale in the US and Singapore and lab grown steak is awaiting approval in the UK and Israel. On Earth, there are claimed environmental benefits for the technology over traditional agricultural food production methods, such as less land use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But in space the primary driver is to reduce costs.

The researchers are doing the experiment because it costs so much to send astronauts food on the ISS - up to £20,000 per astronaut per day, they estimate.

Nasa, other space agencies and private sector firms plan to have a long-term presence on the Moon, in orbiting space stations and maybe one day on Mars. That will mean sending up food for tens and eventually hundreds of astronauts living and working in space – something that would be prohibitively expensive if it were sent up by rockets, according to Dr Shamsul.

Growing food in space would make much more sense, he suggests.

"We could start off simply with protein-enhanced mashed potatoes on to more complex foods which we could put together in space," he tells me.

"But in the longer term we could put the lab-grown ingredients into a 3D printer and print off whatever you want on the space station, such as a steak!"

This sounds like the replicator machines on Star Trek, which are able to produce food and drink from pure energy. But it is no longer the stuff of science fiction, says Dr Shamsul.

He showed me a set-up, called a bioreactor, at Imperial College's Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins in west London. It comprised a brick-coloured concoction bubbling away in a test tube. The process is known as precision fermentation, which is like the fermentation used to make beer, but different: "precision" is a rebranding word for genetically engineered.

In this case a gene has been added to yeast to produce extra vitamins, but all sorts of ingredients can be produced in this way, according to Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre.

"We can make all the elements to make food," says Dr Ledesma-Amaro proudly.

"We can make proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fibres and they can be combined to make different dishes."

This idea might remind you of the food-making machines from Star Trek, which create meals from energy. But Dr. Shamsul says this is no longer just science fiction.

At Imperial College's Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins in London, he showed a machine called a bioreactor. It’s a setup where a reddish liquid is bubbling in a test tube. The method used is called precision fermentation—similar to how beer is made, but more advanced. "Precision" here means it uses genetic engineering.

For example, a gene was added to yeast so it makes extra vitamins. Dr. Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, head of the centre, says many food ingredients can be made this way.

“We can create everything needed to make food,” he explained. “Proteins, fats, carbs, and fiber—then we mix them to create all kinds of meals.”

He isn't allowed to use lab grown ingredients to make dishes for people just yet, because regulatory approval is still pending. But he's getting a head start. For now, instead of lab-grown ingredients, Jakub is using starches and proteins from naturally occurring fungi to develop his recipes. He tells me all sorts of dishes will be possible, once he gets the go-ahead to use lab-grown ingredients.

"We want to create food that is familiar to astronauts who are from different parts of the world so that it can provide comfort.

"We can create anything from French, Chinese, Indian. It will be possible to replicate any kind of cuisine in space."

Today, Jakub is trying out a new recipe of spicy dumplings and dipping sauce. He tells me that I am allowed to try them out, but taster-in-chief is someone far more qualified: Helen Sharman, the UK's first astronaut, who also has a PhD in chemistry.

We tasted the steaming dumplings together.

My view: "They are absolutely gorgeous!"

Dr Sharman's expert view, not dissimilar: "You get a really strong blast from the flavour. It is really delicious and very moreish," she beamed.

"I would love to have had something like this. When I was in space, I had really long-life stuff: tins, freeze dried packets, tubes of stuff. It was fine, but not tasty."

Dr Sharman's more important observation was about the science. Lab-grown food, she said, could potentially be better for astronauts, as well as reduce costs to the levels required to make long-term off-world habitation viable.

Research on the ISS has shown that the biochemistry of astronauts' bodies changes during long duration space missions: their hormone balance and iron levels alter, and they lose calcium from their bones. Astronauts take supplements to compensate, but lab-grown food could in principle be tweaked with the extra ingredients already built in, says Dr Sharman.

"Astronauts tend to lose weight because they are not eating as much because they don't have the variety and interest in their diet," she told me.

"So, astronauts might be more open to having something that has been cooked from scratch and a feeling that you are really eating wholesome food."