The Artemis II mission to the Moon has reignited humanity’s desire for exploration and renewed our perspective of Earth. It has also revived our fascination with space food.
As space missions become longer and more ambitious, food in space has emerged as a crucial priority, intrinsically linked to brain health, culture, sustainability and agriculture.
These challenges are driving innovation, inspiring practical solutions for life both on Earth and beyond.
The race to the Moon and beyond is accelerating. Some say it’s for the benefit of all humanity. But is it really? In this seven-part series, we explore what our future in space will look like, how we might travel and survive out there, and what’s needed to stop a catastrophe from happening.
Once an engineering problem
In the early days of human space travel, eating was treated largely as an engineering problem rather than an aesthetic one. Astronauts survived on pureed meals squeezed from aluminium tubes, and on freeze-dried cubes.
In 1973, Skylab, the United States’ first experimental space station in low Earth orbit, introduced the first truly functional space galley allowing for the preparation and cooking of meals.
Since then nutrition and food have remained secondary concerns, often reduced to issues of mass and storage efficiency.
Perhaps the most famous early space food controversy occurred during the Gemini 3 mission in 1965, when astronaut John Young secretly smuggled a corned beef sandwich into orbit, only for crumbs to float through the capsule in what became known as a cautionary tale. The crumbs from the sandwich could have resulted in catastrophic errors, if they had jammed or impacted any of the onboard equipment.
Today researchers are no longer asking whether astronauts can eat in space, but instead: how does the space environment alter how food tastes? How can nutrition optimise astronaut performance and cognitive function? How can food growth systems support sustainability during long-distance space exploration missions?
And perhaps most importantly, what does human food culture look like beyond Earth? Because even in space, life is about more than survival – there must still be room for small luxuries.
NASA
Spoilt for pre-packaged choice
Astronauts are currently spoilt for choice when it comes to pre-packaged foods aboard the International Space Station, with the current menu offering a selection of more than 200 meal and beverage options. The catch though, is that aboard their missions, they are only allowed 8-10 of those different choices. This means that during months-long missions, food fatigue can kick in.
But one thing is still missing – daily fresh produce.
The astronauts are treated to a few pieces of fresh fruit each resupply mission every few months. But this certainly doesn’t compare to the fresh food us humans on Earth have access to.
Ready-to-eat fresh food in space has become a common theme of our research in recent years.
We’ve been exploring the viability of yoghurt production, mushroom growth and even various microgreens on board the International Space Station. Microgreens are the young, tender seedlings of edible vegetables or herbs.
NASA
This research explores everything from the basics of nutritional properties of the food, to how the biological systems may have changed in orbit.
In a microgravity environment, producing foods as basic as yoghurt, mushrooms and microgreens becomes exponentially more complicated. Limited resources, stresses on the biological systems, and constrained space are all major considerations.
But these are challenges we must overcome, especially as we think of the future of space exploration where we will no longer be able to rely entirely on prepackaged meals.
NASA/Chris Williams
More than nutrition
There are serious concerns for humans’ gut health over long space flights. Increasing fresh, space-cultivated foods might help to address this.
Above nutrition, food is vital to human culture. Shared meals and the art of preparing even the most basic meals play deeply into the mental health of humans, and this is especially true aboard a space station.
Even kids recognise the importance of food as a cultural tool. When British astronaut Tim Peake challenged students to create a meal for him on the International Space Station, many thought about the meaning different foods had in their own lives and what they didn’t want astronauts to miss out on.
This human connection is vital. It helps us appreciate how space on a fundamental level is a human endeavour.
As we look beyond low-Earth orbit and set our sights on a Moon base in the 2030s, we must consider both nutrition and the overall experience of living and eating for the astronauts on lunar missions that will last weeks or even months.
Through the Artemis II mission we saw first-hand the simple joys that came from shared meals. For example, the crew celebrated their far side of the Moon crossing with Canadian maple cream cookies. We even saw a tub of Nutella floating through the capsule.
Food cannot just be functional; it needs to serve multiple purposes. Sometimes, it should simply bring joy.
The future of space is uncertain, but one thing we can count on is that food is one of the vital parts of our continued exploration.
