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Sky News
20-05-2025
- Science
- Sky News
What astronauts could end up eating in space after experiment 'meets objectives'
Feeding astronauts is astronomically expensive and as the idea of humans colonising the moon and Mars becomes increasingly realistic, there's a race to find better ways to feed them. It costs an estimated £20,000 a day to feed just one human in space, and that will only increase the further away we travel. The bulk of the cost comes from transportation - every extra gram of weight added to a rocket means more fuel burned and less space for money-making "payloads" or cargo. Fresh food is also unlikely to last a full trip to the International Space Station (ISS), let alone a trip to the moon's south pole or Mars. Instead, space agencies and scientists around the world are trying to work out how to make food where the astronauts are, instead of transporting it all from Earth. A team that recently launched a mini-laboratory into orbit to test, for the first time, if lab-grown food could be grown in space told Sky News its experiment "met the mission's objectives". "This is our first step towards... a future where we can produce food, materials, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and fuels needed for space exploration directly where and when it is needed," said one of the team's scientists, Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro from Imperial College, London. Their mission may lay the groundwork for cheaper and more varied food in space, as more of us blast off to the stars. Lab-grown steaks, Chinese food and more One option for feeding astronauts is "precision fermenting" food in space, which is what Dr Ledesma-Amaro's team are attempting. "Precision fermentation is how we make beer, how we make bread, how we make kimchi," he said. It's also how some vegetarian proteins like Quorn are made. "It's healthy [and] it can give us all the protein and micronutrients we need." An advantage of using microorganisms to grow food in space, where they'll face extreme conditions like microgravity, high radiation and potentially high temperatures, is their hardiness. "When we go to extreme environments like the top of the mountain or the bottom of the sea, the only organisms are the microorganisms," said Dr Ledesma-Amaro. "So they are the ones that can adapt better to this extreme environment." Fermenting microorganisms to create different foods doesn't mean everything will get the slightly sour, fermented taste of pickles or beer. Instead, scientists can make a fermented version of pretty much anything. "On Earth, there are companies producing milk proteins and making milk without cows, or maybe taking proteins and making steaks," said Dr Ledesma-Amaro. Aqeel Shamsul, chief executive of Frontier Space, said the huge variety of food they'll be able to make will also boost astronauts' morale. "You can get all the base ingredients for Chinese cuisine, for example, and then make the dish that you want," he said. "It's really important to be able to support the astronauts, but also for morale purposes." Growing fresh fruit and veggies Another option for feeding people in space is from traditional horticulture, with a twist. On the ISS, there is a small, experimental garden tended to by astronauts known as Veggie. Lettuce, cabbage, kale and flowers have all been grown in the garden, according to NASA, with the vegetables adding variety to the astronauts' diets. The Veggie garden is roughly the size of a carry-on bag and can hold six plants, which grow in a "pillow" filled with clay compost and fertiliser. The pillows help distribute water, nutrients and air around the roots. Without the pillows, the roots could drown or get mouldy, because in space, fluids tend to form bubbles. Freeze-dried fare Finally, there's the traditional packaged or freeze-dried fare astronauts currently eat in space. NASA astronauts, for example, can choose from a menu of freeze-dried food and drink powders as well as "cookies, candy, and other dried goods", according to the US space agency. Some astronauts even take their own bespoke creations with them, like Britain's Tim Peake, who took tins of luxury food like stewed apples and bacon sandwiches created by Heston Blumenthal to the ISS. But when humans fly further into space without access to resupply shipments, the vitamins in those packaged foods will break down over time, according to NASA. That could lead to deficiencies in astronauts' diets, which is why so many people are investigating new ways to make food in space.
Forbes
10-05-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Soviet Spacecraft Cosmos 482 Location After Reentry Baffling Watchers
The likely fate of Cosmos 482. The super-tough Soviet space probe that left Earth 53 years ago on a mission for Venus it never came close to completing has finally come home, ending a very long detour in orbit. While everyone agrees that Cosmos 482 (also sometimes Kosmos 482) has stopped flying, there's little agreement on where it crash or splash landed. The Venera initiative lander launched in 1972 but a malfunction soon left it trapped around Earth. It was a subject of fascination in recent weeks after it became clear its orbit was decaying to an eventual impact. The rugged titanium spacecraft was built to withstand conditions on Venus, meaning it had a very good chance of surviving a trip through Earth's atmosphere to crash land somewhere on our surface. Space agencies and other trackers use different models to estimate where and when Cosmos 482 might have re-entered the atmosphere, and without any direct observations or much other data, these 'best guesses' are about all we have to go on about its final resting place. And these estimates place that spot either in the South Pacific, somewhere in western Europe, the Indian Ocean or in or offshore of western Australia. It's quite a range. The lack of any fireball sightings or other credible observations suggests a remote, watery resting place, which was always the most likely outcome. But the reality is we simply don't know. Cosmos 482 was set to make four passes over Germany during the reentry window. It was seen by European Space Agency radar systems during the first two of these passes, at approximately 04:30 UTC and 06:04 UTC, but never again. The expected ground track during the reentry window of Cosmos 482. "As the descent craft was not spotted by radar over Germany at the expected 07:32 UTC / 09:32 CEST pass, it is most likely that the reentry has already occurred," the ESA reported The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Operations Center reportedber Saturday morning that it had narrowed the re-entry window for Cosmos 482 to a total period of just 20 minutes, centered on the part of the spacecraft's journey when it would have been flying over central Europe, including the UK, Germany and Poland. However, the EUSST cautions that the entirety of the 40 minute window also encompasses a long arc stretching from northernmost South America to the Bay of Bengal. The EU ground track map for Cosmos 482. After staying quiet on the impending fate of Cosmos 482 all through the build up to its reentry, Russian leadership finally made a statement on its belief about the final resting place of the probe. Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency reports that 'the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta.' Meanwhile, experienced orbit watcher Marco Langbroek places re-entry off the coast of Australia and US Space Force data puts it in the South Pacific. This disagreement may not be as significant as it seems. All the predictions are essentially looking at the same orbital track of Cosmos 482 and then running different models that try to account for a number of variables like space weather, atmospheric conditions, the composition of the spacecraft and other factors. Because reentering objects travel at such high speeds, small disagreements in these models lead to different results separated by thousands of miles. The reality is simply that we don't have enough data. In the past, government data from a sensor network used to detect nuclear detonations has been used to help pinpoint the impact point of space junk or meteoroids. It's still possible we might see that sort of data, helpful information from weather satellites, lightning mappers and visual sightings slowly roll in to better establish the last resting place of a venerable, if wayward, spacecraft.
