Late Monday night, a Falcon 9 rocket pierced the sky above Cape Canaveral. Aboard its nosecone, tucked inside a shoebox-sized laboratory, were microscopic passengers that may one day make dinner on Mars.
The experiment is a collaboration between scientists at Imperial College London and tech firms Frontier Space and ATMOS Space Cargo. Researchers launched what is essentially a miniature bioreactor to Earth’s orbit. The point is to see if engineered yeast can produce edible proteins — and perhaps, one day, full meals — in the weightless void of space.
Fantastic yeasts (and where to launch them)
The idea of precision fermentation is an exciting one. We’ve used fermentation for millennia to make things like cheese, beer, and kimchi. What’s new in precision fermentation is that scientists can insert specific genes into microbes like yeast to produce exactly the molecules they want, from vitamin B12 to milk proteins.
This means you can basically use microbes as programmable factories to create any food you want — at least in theory. We’ve already started doing it on Earth but now, this idea is being trialled into orbit. Here, we contend with the new constraints of gravity and radiation.
The implications are vast. The cost of feeding a single astronaut can reach $26,000 per day, according to ESA estimates. Launching bulky supplies adds enormous weight — and with it, exponential expense. By contrast, a few grams of yeast and a compact bioreactor could someday whip up meals, medicine, and even plastics using onboard resources like carbon dioxide and water.
“We’re excited that this project makes use of academic and industry expertise in physics, engineering, biotech and space science — converging on this challenge,” says Imperial’s Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, from the Department of Bioengineering.
“This mission represents a major milestone in democratizing access to space research,” adds Dr. Aqeel Shamsul, CEO of Frontier Space. “Our SpaceLab Mark 1, ‘lab-in-a-box’ technology enables researchers to conduct sophisticated experiments in microgravity without the traditional barriers to space-based research.”
What’s for dinner in orbit?
At Imperial, researchers are already creating complex foods, like spicy dumplings and dipping sauce. According to BBC’s Pallab Ghosh, who got the chance to try them out, they’re absolutely delicious. But this space mission will be a much simpler trial. It will last only three hours. In essence, it’s just a proof of concept. Can genetically engineered yeast survive launch, thrive in microgravity, and produce useful ingredients like proteins, carbs, and vitamins?
If it works, then in two years’ time, researchers hope they can set up a pilot food-production plant aboard the International Space Station. Farther down the road, they hope to scale up for lunar outposts or Martian colonies.
It’s a vision once reserved for science fiction. But the Star Trek replicator — the mythical machine that conjures meals from pure energy — is looking more like an engineering challenge than a fantasy.
And in a time when Earth’s food systems are under strain, the implications aren’t limited to orbit. Back at Imperial’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, researchers hope these same microbes can help make environmentally friendly, affordable food here on Earth. Fewer cows, fewer emissions, and food security, all grown in steel tanks instead of on sprawling farms.
The micro-laboratory is hosted inside Phoenix, Europe’s first commercial returnable spacecraft. It will orbit Earth for about three hours before splashing down off the coast of Portugal. When recovered, it will provide the first-ever data on how these microbial chefs perform under zero gravity and increased radiation.
If everything works out fine, when future astronauts sit down for a meal, it might not come from a pouch. It might come from a cell, engineered in London, fermented in orbit, and designed to taste like home.
