Sunday, May 25, 2025
Khmer Daily Cambodia News
34 °c
Phnom Penh
  • LATEST
  • CAMBODIA
  • ASIA
    • JAPAN
    • SOUTH KOREA
    • TAIWAN
  • WORLD
    • CHINA
    • RUSSIA
  • BUSINESS CAMBODIA
  • TECHNOLOGY
No Result
View All Result
  • LATEST
  • CAMBODIA
  • ASIA
    • JAPAN
    • SOUTH KOREA
    • TAIWAN
  • WORLD
    • CHINA
    • RUSSIA
  • BUSINESS CAMBODIA
  • TECHNOLOGY
No Result
View All Result
The Khmer Daily
No Result
View All Result
Home World US

Nasa looks to spice up astronaut menu with deep space food production

May 31, 2023
in US, World
0
Nasa looks to spice up astronaut menu with deep space food production
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In the 2015 sci-fi film The Martian, Matt Damon stars as an astronaut who survives on a diet of potatoes cultivated in human feces while marooned on the Red Planet.

Now a New York company that makes carbon-negative aviation fuel is taking the menu for interplanetary cuisine in a very different direction. Its innovation has put it in the finals of a Nasa-sponsored contest to encourage development of next-generation technologies for meeting the food needs of astronauts.

Closely held Air Company of Brooklyn has pioneered a way of recycling carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts in flight to grow yeast-based nutrients for protein shakes designed to nourish crews on long-duration deep-space missions.

“It’s definitely more nutritious than Tang,” said company co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Stafford Sheehan, referring to the powdered beverage popularized in 1962 by John Glenn when he became the first American to orbit Earth.

Sheehan, who has a doctorate in physical chemistry from Yale University, said he originally developed his carbon-conversion technology as a means of producing high-purity alcohols for jet fuel, perfume and vodka.

The NASA-sponsored Deep Space Food Challenge prompted Sheehan to modify his invention as a way of producing edible proteins, carbohydrates and fats from the same system.

Tastes like… Seitan

The resulting single-cell protein drink entered in NASA’s contest has the consistency of a whey protein shake, Sheehan said. Sheehan compared its flavor with that of seitan, a tofu-like food made from wheat gluten that originated in East Asian cuisine and has been adopted by vegetarians as a meat substitute.

“And you get that sweet-tasting, almost malted flavor to it,” Sheehan said in an interview.

Apart from protein drinks, the same process can be used to create more carbohydrate-heavy substitutes for breads, pastas and tortillas. For the sake of culinary variety, Sheehan said he sees his smoothie being supplemented on missions by other sustainably produced comestibles.

The company’s patented Airmade technology was one of eight winners announced by Nasa this month in the second phase of its food competition, along with $750,000 in prize money. A final round of the competition is coming up.

Other winners included: a bioregenerative system from a Florida lab to raise fresh vegetables, mushrooms and even insect larvae to be used as micronutrients; an artificial photosynthesis process developed in California to create plant- and fungal-based ingredients; and a gas-fermentation technology from Finland to produce single-celled proteins.

Up to $1.5 million in prize money will be divvied up among the eventual final winners of the contest.

While few if any are likely to earn a place in the Michelin Guide for fine dining, they represent a big leap forward from Tang and the freeze-dried snacks consumed by astronauts in the earliest days of space travel.

The new food-growing schemes are also more appetizing, and promise to be far more nutritious, than Matt Damon’s fictional poop-fertilized potatoes in “The Martian.”

“That was taking an idea to an extreme for a Hollywood movie,” said Ralph Fritsche, space crop production manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, adding that human waste alone “is not the complete nutrient source that plants need to grow and thrive.”

Keeping astronauts well nourished for extended periods within the limited, zero-gravity confines of space vehicles in low-Earth orbit long has posed a challenge for NASA. For the past two decades, crews aboard the International Space Station have lived on a diet mostly of packaged meals with some fresh produce delivered on regular re-supply missions.

ISS teams also have experimented with growing a number of vegetables in orbit, including lettuce, cabbage, kale and chile peppers, according to Nasa.

But the imperative for self-contained, low-waste food production requiring minimal resources has become more pronounced as Nasa sets its sights on returning astronauts to the moon and eventual human exploration of Mars and beyond.

Advances in space-based food production also have direct applications for feeding Earth’s ever-growing population in an era when climate change is making food more scarce and harder to produce, Fritsche said.

“Controlled environment agriculture, the first modules we deploy on the moon, will have some similarity to the vertical farms that we’ll have here on Earth,” Fritsche said.

Sheehan’s system starts by taking carbon dioxide gas scrubbed from the air breathed by astronauts and blending it with hydrogen gas extracted from water by electrolysis. The resulting alcohol-and-water mixture is then fed into a small quantity of yeast to grow a renewable supply of single-celled proteins and other nutrients.

In essence, Sheehan said, the carbon dioxide and hydrogen form an alcohol feedstock for the yeast, “and the yeast is the food for the humans.”

“We’re not re-inventing products,” Sheehan said, “we’re just making them in a more sustainable way.”

This article was first published in Asia One . All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.

Tags: #foods#innovation#NASA#space
Previous Post

Chinese tiremakers bet on recovery via new plants in Cambodia

Next Post

Japan’s lower court rules that not allowing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional

Related Posts

Italy to pass ‘right to be forgotten’ law for cancer survivors

Italy to pass ‘right to be forgotten’ law for cancer survivors

by AsiaOne
June 15, 2023
0
24

ROME — Italy will pass a law on the "right to be forgotten" (RTBF) for cancer survivors, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni...

Bill Gates in China: Microsoft co-founder to meet Xi Jinping

Bill Gates in China: Microsoft co-founder to meet Xi Jinping

by AsiaOne
June 15, 2023
0
38

HONG KONG — Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp's co-founder, is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday (June 16) during his...

US judge temporarily blocks Microsoft acquisition of Activision

US judge temporarily blocks Microsoft acquisition of Activision

by AsiaOne
June 15, 2023
0
30

WASHINGTON - A US judge late on Tuesday (June 13) granted the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) request to temporarily block Microsoft...

Most Popular

$2 million electric motorbike assembly plant in Cambodia by Verywords Co Ltd launched

$2 million electric motorbike assembly plant in Cambodia by Verywords Co Ltd launched

May 30, 2023
48
Japan jeers at ‘terrifying’ mascot for Osaka World Expo: ‘Who approved that monstrosity?’

Japan jeers at ‘terrifying’ mascot for Osaka World Expo: ‘Who approved that monstrosity?’

May 11, 2022
21
EZECOM first to collaborate with AWS to provide leading Cloud service for Cambodia

EZECOM first to collaborate with AWS to provide leading Cloud service for Cambodia

March 15, 2022
43
Cambodia Rice price could rise up to 20 percent in coming months

Cambodia Rice price could rise up to 20 percent in coming months

May 25, 2022
62
Eva Premium Ice is looking for distributors as it expands in Cambodia

Eva Premium Ice is looking for distributors as it expands in Cambodia

November 12, 2021
30
Wrapped in blanket, dumped in pond: Top South Korean livestreamer found dead in Cambodia

Wrapped in blanket, dumped in pond: Top South Korean livestreamer found dead in Cambodia

June 14, 2023
102

© 2020 By Khmer Daily News

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Latest
  • Cambodia
  • ASIA
  • World
  • Business
  • Tech

© 2019 The Khmer Daily.

error: Content is protected !!