ROOM
52
Astronautics
S
pace food might conjure thoughts of
the fruit-flavoured Tang drink,
astronaut ice cream or space food
sticks, but none of these products have
the strong connection to space that one might
imagine. Tang wasn’t developed for space,
merely used during some early flights.
Astronaut ice cream, the staple of air and space
museums worldwide, was actually developed
for spaceflight but hasn’t ever flown to space.
And space food sticks were mostly a
commercial product attempting to cash in on
the excitement around spaceflight in the early
1960s, though they did fly aboard Skylab III.
Today’s space food eaten aboard the
International Space Station (ISS) shares more
similarities with military Meals Ready to Eat
(MREs), vacuum sealed plastic pouches that
must be rehydrated or reheated. Ideally,
space food should be lightweight, compact in
volume, nutritious, easy to prepare, eat and
clean up (microgravity complicates all of these
requirements), long lasting and delicious.
For a mission to Mars, food will need to last many
years. Food for Mars-bound astronauts would be
nearly two-and-half-years old by the time the
astronauts returned to Earth, and supplies pre-
positioned on Mars, sent during the launch window
Astronauts and cosmonauts working for six months or more on the
International Space Station have already proved that eating and sharing
meals together is a vital part of any successful long-term space mission -
food is not just fuel for the body but also a conduit for culture, comfort and
camaraderie. And nowhere will this be more so than on the first human
flights to Mars when mission durations will be measured in years.
Dr Martha Lenio
Mars Green
Consulting, Ontario,
Canada
Sophie Milam
SVL Analytical Inc,
Idaho, USA
Zak Wilson
Chief Engineer, HI-
SEAS Mission III
Recipe for success
on flights to Mars
The HI-SEAS habitat on
Hawaii.
