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A team of engineers and planetary scientists from the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University, Canada, has discovered that it might be possible to produce food for space travelers by feeding bacteria with asteroid material, which would result in the growth of edible biomass.
In their article 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.
Previous research has shown that future spacecraft traveling to remote regions of the solar system or beyond would not be able to hold enough food to feed astronauts. Nor could such a craft support the growth of a sufficient amount of food on board.
In this new study, researchers propose the idea of creating edible (and hopefully tasty) food from bacteria grown by feeding on materials recovered from the surface of a nearby asteroid.
The idea isn’t entirely new: Researchers working on a DARPA project studied a similar approach, using plastic containers containing ready-to-eat meals as food for microbes that would grow into biomass.
Van Krevelen coalification diagram comparing differences in H/C and O/C ratios between coals and biomass (Jenkins et al., Reference Jenkins, Baxter, Miles and Miles1998) with respect to the elemental compositions of the IOM in Murchison and Tagish Lake meteorites (Pizzarello et al., Reference Pizzarello, Cooper and Flynn2006). Credit: International Journal of Astrobiology (2024). DOI: 10.1017/S1473550424000119
A previous team found that chopping up meteorites and using them as fertilizer for microbes caused the microbes to consume the carbonaceous material and grow. A discovery which suggests that the first lives on Earth could have been maintained in this way.
The researchers then determined how much asteroid material would be needed to support astronauts on long journeys. They used the asteroid Bennu as a reference. Previous research has shown that it is made of a type of material that microbes could eat. The researchers found that if the microbes consumed the entire asteroid, they could be used to produce enough food to sustain an 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 early stages. They note that numerous tests on this biomass would have to be done to ensure that it would not be toxic and would be palatable. They also note that the varying composition of asteroids would present additional challenges.
More information:
Eric Pilles et al, How to exploit asteroids to feed on space, International Journal of Astrobiology (2024). DOI: 10.1017/S1473550424000119
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