Space food to feed the world!

Sustainability is really all about improving the efficiency and fairness of how we all live on Earth. It’s ensuring that, in the future, everybody has a good quality of life. We need to innovate and create better ways of living so that we can enjoy our planet and be healthy.

An exciting competition, The Deep Space Food Challenge, from NASA is calling for entries which design ways for astronauts to grow and create food in space. This will allow humans to be able to travel further into space, more comfortably, and what is really exciting is that these methods of food production can also be used in remote and resource-poor areas of the world where they currently suffer from not having enough food to eat.

Entries from scientists and engineers have created ways of growing and producing food in some amazing ways and using a variety of methods! Astronauts will be able to make bread in a single bag, create meat alternatives from insects and grow fruit and vegetables in vertical farms. Algae is used by many entries to create nutrient rich foods and as they are so easy to grow and reproduce, they might become the main part of a space diet! The food production techniques use as little energy and water as possible and can be used in many situations on Earth as well as in space. This will make food production possible in areas where growing crops is difficult because of weather conditions and changing climate.

Have a look at the NASA website, watch the video and read through some of the entries!

Have a look at the NASA website and video

Why don't you check out our DIVERSITY DECK® Inner Planets Deck to find more about Space and Space Exploration!