Inside a lab surrounded by the hum of food processing equipment, Fuanyi Fobellah wears a long black lab coat, disposable gloves and a hairnet.
It’s not quite a space suit, but this summer, he’s pretending to be an astronaut.
“We're called simunauts,” Fobellah said, “which are basically simulated astronauts.”
Along with three other similarly clad Ohio State students, he’s testing technology that astronauts could use to grow and cook food in outer space.
Right now, the International Space Station is restocked about every two to three months, but as astronauts endeavor to venture further into space on multi-year missions to Mars and other faraway planets, they won’t have that luxury.
“You can't really just prepackage three years worth of food for space,” said simunaut Charlie Frick.
So a few years ago, NASA launched its Deep Space Food Challenge, calling on teams from around the world to develop new food systems technology for space.
Just a few finalists are left in the competition. And this summer, Ohio State students have partnered with the space agency to test out the competitors’ inventions.
“We are essentially doing the things that the astronauts would be doing, like working with the food systems, and the only difference is we're here on Earth,” Fobellah said. “We’re trying to determine which technologies would be the best fit for using out in space.”
The technology
Ohio State’s simunauts tested out four different food-related inventions.
“The giant steel thing — it produces something called mycofood,” Frick said, pointing to a metal chamber connected to a web of plastic tubes.
“Essentially, [you] put spores in that chamber, feed it glucose and everything else it needs, and then out comes a paste that is mostly mushroom and that is a meat substitute.”
It’s pretty flavorless on its own, Frick said, but you can spice it up to make it taste like chicken nuggets or hamburger.
Another piece of technology looks kind of like a normal hot plate, but it can cook food in places where there’s not much gravity by using centrifugal force.
Essentially, it spins in circles really fast, said simunaut Sakura Sugiyama. She held up bags of dehydrated eggs, cheese and crust — all the makings of a quiche.
“You'll pipe that in there and it'll rotate and kind of travel up the edges,” she explained. “And then you'll end up with this three-layered disc that you can cut into slices so you get rectangular slices of quiche.”
Two other technologies create growing conditions for food, but instead of in farm fields, trays of veggies and mushrooms sprout in sterilized pods. The students opened the door to one of these pods and pulled out a tray full of microgreens ready to harvest.
They cut the greens at their stems to be used in a salad or in soup, but they don’t toss the inedible roots. Graduate student Mehir Un Nisa says the scraps go into another pod to feed fly larva.
That’s food too.
“At the larval stage, you need to harvest them, process them and crush them into a protein powder,” Nisa said. “You can use that powder in your smoothies, in your shakes, in your soups or anything.”
What does the future hold?
This technology is intended for space, but there could be uses for it on Earth too. All of these food systems are designed to make highly nutritious and low-waste meals, which could have applications in food deserts, crowded urban areas and regions with harsh growing conditions.
NASA will announce the winners of its Deep Space Food Challenge at Ohio State later this month, taking into account the students’ experiences actually using the technology.
But as they wrap up their roles as simulated astronauts, the real challenge of producing food in space goes on.
And Ohio State may have more of a role to play. Last year, the university opened a science park to house a replica laboratory of the Starlab space station, where researchers can continue to conduct space-related experiments, continuing the state’s long history in space exploration.
