Space Mission / Purpose:

Our mission is to send a rover before the astronauts by a couple of months, and have the rovers plant plants and when the astronauts arrive they harvest the plants.

spacefood anaylicts lab

Benefits

• Nutrition and variety

• Quality food system that will produce food on long journeys.

Freeze drying vegtables

• Bright colors and fresh smells

  •   Oxygen
  •   Awesome kitchen

• For future long-duration missions and colonies on the Moon or Mars, space farming would provide a life support system with a biological component (such as plants) — called a “bioregenerative life support system”. Astronauts could grow crops that would not only supplement a healthy diet, but also remove toxic carbon dioxide from the air inside their spacecraft and create life-sustaining oxygen.

• The areas in which NASA-developed technologies benefit society can broadly be defined as: health and medicine, public safety, consumer goods, environmental and agricultural resources, computer technology and industrial productivity

Who We Are:

We are North Elementary students that are in a group called Tekids and we are promoting NASA.  We are also trying to make ways to plant  plants on comets, planets, and on astroids.

Foods flown on space missions are researched and developed at the Space Food Systems Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, which is staffed by food scientists, dietitians and engineers. About a month before a mission launches, all food that will be taken aboard is packaged and stored in refrigerated lockers at the Johnson Space Center. Three weeks before launch, the food is transported to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It’s loaded onboard the shuttle two to three days before launch

Brief History:

There is a need to increase the shelf life (length of time that a food is good) of a stored food system from 18 months (currently the typical shelf life of space stationstored foods) to up to five years, while maintaining a variety of great-tasting foods. The longer the mission, the more important it is to have a quality food system that is nutritious, safe and tasty. With the need for longer shelf life, the menu will move more towards thermostabilized foods, which maintain their quality longer than current freeze-dried foods. Thermostabilized foods are heat processed to destroy bacteria and other organisms so they can be stored at ambient temperature. Fruits and tuna fish are sometimes preserved by this method.

Goals:

To develop and deliver technologies for human centered spacecraft that will support crews on missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Related articles