NASA awarded $750,000 to a business that wants to feed astronauts fresh microgreens and insects

• NASA needs a better way to nourish its astronauts on long-duration space missions, like to Mars.
• Interstellar Lab designed a sustainable farming system that could address the issue.

Going to space has its perks but fresh, nutritious food isn't one of them.

NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge, launched in 2021, asked teams worldwide to develop a sustainable way to feed and nourish astronauts on long-duration space missions, including to Mars.

The biotech company Interstellar Lab beat over 300 competing teams to receive NASA's $750,000 grand prize in August for its project NuCLEUS (NUtritional Closed-Loop Eco-Unit System).

NuCLEUS consists of a series of cubes that resemble a large tic-tac-toe board. The cubes mostly contain vegetable plants, microgreens, mushrooms, or insects.

So far, Interstellar Lab has tested 10 different vegetable and microgreen plants (including Daikon radish, broccoli, amaranth, shishito peppers, fenugreek, and onions), one mushroom variety (oyster), and one insect species (black soldier flies), with plans to add more to the list.

They're all fresh and edible — including the flies. The variety isn't designed for astronauts' appetites, though. It's for their health.

Due to solar radiation, the nutritional value of prepackaged food starts to degrade after being in space for seven to eight months, which can leave astronauts on long-duration space missions deficient in key vitamins and minerals like magnesium, potassium, and B12, according to Barbara Belvisi, Interstellar Lab's founder and CEO.

Researchers have found that these nutritional gaps can make it difficult for astronauts to combat bone loss, muscle atrophy, cardiovascular dysfunction, and the other physiological challenges that come with living in space.

"There was a list of specific nutrients that NASA was interested in growing fresh food to cover those gaps. And so this is where we started," Belvisi said, adding that NuCLEUS is designed to supplement prepackaged food, not replace it.

For the final phase of NASA's competition, NuCLEUS produced about 22 pounds of plants and insects over 1.5 months. A single crew member on a long-duration mission, like to Mars, would require about 661 pounds per year (or about four times that amount), Belvisi said.

She added that the version tested for NASA's competition is a prototype and the company is working on the next generation, which will be capable of producing more food.

Farming in space with AI

Farming in space will look very different from farming on Earth. In the case of NuCLEUS, AI does a lot of the work.

Each NuCLEUS cube is a contained environment. The software that controls the lighting, humidity, and temperature in each cube manipulates the environment to provide the optimal growing conditions for each plant's nutritional content.

Interstellar Lab's AI collects and processes the data, which then informs the software on how it can improve.

"I think this is why NASA liked it," Belvisi said of NuCLEUS. "It's because there is this smart system that is adapting itself, and the human has to do very little intervention compared to existing systems right now," she added.

Another benefit is that NuCLEUS is a closed-loop system that can function on its own, more or less.

For example, the insects eat the inedible portions of the vegetable and mushroom plants. The flies' by-products (like feces) get reincorporated as fertilizer. Even the water is recycled. Most of the waste is repurposed in some way, generating minimal trash that would otherwise take up room on a spaceship.

The only outside resources NuCLEUS requires are power, additional water, and time from the crew, Belvisi said.

Interstellar Lab is launching one of its systems into space next year

While NuCLEUS was designed with NASA astronauts in mind, Belvisi said that Interstellar Lab is also working with private companies.

Interstellar Lab is scheduled to launch one of its NuCLEUS systems into space early next year — but it's not yet revealing for which company, she said.

The $750,000 winnings will go partly toward upgrading NuCLEUS's hardware, readying it for space, and paying the team, Belvisi said. "It's been three years of hard work."