Taken by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Credit: Philip James (University of Toledo),Steven Lee (University of Colorado), NASA
Credit: NASA
Stuffing the food pantry for the first voyagers to strike out for Mars is no easy task.
That’s the word from Maya Cooper, a senior research scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in the Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston, Texas.
Maya has reported that provisioning astronauts with food is one of the greatest challenges in scripting the first human mission to the red planet.
She presented her views August 28 at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), now underway in Denver, Colorado.
Cooper explained that the challenges of provisioning space vehicles and Martian surface bases begin with tangible factors, such weight and nutrition, and encompass psychological nuances, such as providing a varied, tasty menu that wards off boredom.
New approaches needed
The solutions envisioned now include requiring astronauts to grow some of their own food and engage in much more food preparation than their counterparts on the International Space Station.
For flights on past space shuttle missions and the International Space Station, astronauts get 3.8 pounds of food per day.
But for a five-year round-trip mission to Mars, that would mean almost 7,000 pounds of food per person.
“That’s a clear impediment to a lot of mission scenarios,” Cooper said, and new approaches are needed.
Growing crops on Mars
Right now, NASA experts are looking into the possibility of implementing a bioregenerative system – and that would involve growing crops in space and possibly shipping some bulk commodities to a Mars habitat as well.
“This scenario involves much more food processing and meal preparation than the current food system developed for the space shuttles and the International Space Station,” Cooper reported at the meeting.
In a list of plants for a Mars mission’s kitchen garden, those plants that would grow well with minimal tending and would not take up much room, Cooper pointed to several prime candidates: Lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, green onions, radishes, bell peppers, strawberries, fresh herbs and cabbages.
At the ACS gathering, Cooper cited another option for these missions, the first of which could launch in the 2030s, according to some forecasts.
Hurling bulk commodities to Mars could involve unmanned spacecraft launched a year or two before the astronauts depart for the red planet. Doing so would establish stashes of food with long shelf-lives that the crew could use while exploring the red planet.
By Leonard David