By 2025 , NASA is planning to ship humans on a historic trip to Mars . Yes , they will boldly go where no man has gone before — but what will they eat?Popular Sciencerecently interviewedNASA food scientist Vickie Kloeris about her quest to create space meals that are healthy , long - lasting , and — defy we say it — tasty ?
Kloeris ’s biggest challenge is creating food that is appetizing and can last for calendar month outside a icebox . While some people picture Mars ’s first settlers eating fresh vegetables harvested from hydroponic greenhouses , the residents will belike be snacking on solid food that will have been delivered to Mars five to seven years before their arrival . And they may have mass of option . Kloeris and her contemporaries currently provide 200 different food and beverage pick for astronauts at the International Space Station .
There are also concerns over how the meals ’ nutritional content will disintegrate over time . scientist are take on this challenge by studying the food ' shelf sprightliness to see how many nutrients pull round . They ’re also experiment with fortifying the intellectual nourishment and looking into young ways to process and sterilize them so they ’ll preserve more food from the start .
Of course , there are still other issues at play . Researchers do n’t know how deep blank space radiation feign food , and there ’s no means to test this without leaving Earth ’s air . And even though space denizen might be able to turn some produce in an lead calorie-free - outfitted box , that is not going to knuckle under them enough nutritionally - dense veg to impact their diets . Meanwhile , it ’s unbelievable that innovations like three-D - printing or insect food production will impact the way astronauts dine .
However much work it contract , Kloeris says she hop to check that that space voyager like what they ’re consume . “ Food is one of the few tool comfort that the astronaut have , so the intellectual nourishment has become really important from a psychological perspective , ” she says .
[ h / tPopular Science ]
