NASA comes to Ohio State for Deep Space Food Symposium

When preparing food for space travel, things like size and nutritional content must be considered. A less obvious but equally important question is: will the food crumble?

“You may not know this, but crumbs are dangerous in space, so we don’t take things like crackers,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station at NASA. “Crumbs could get in someone’s eye if they’re floating around, and that’s dangerous.”

Gatens was the keynote speaker at the Deep Space Food Symposium held last week at Ohio State University. She was joined by speakers throughout the day, including Christian Lange of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA colleague G. Michael Green and John Horack, holder of the Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State.

Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. opened the symposium and highlighted the theme of the day: working together for a greater purpose.

“This is a special gathering on a special topic, a special mission,” Carter said. “… There’s a lot of excitement here. This is science, industry and government coming together to solve some of the biggest challenges we envision for space exploration.”

In addition to panel discussions, the day also saw the announcement of the American winner of the CSA and NASA Deep Space Food Challenge. The challenge invited teams from across the country to submit proposals for “novel and breakthrough food technologies or systems that require minimal effort and maximize the production of safe, nutritious and tasty food for long-duration space missions and have the potential to benefit people on Earth.”

Food, Gatens says, is a vital resource for astronauts. But not just for nutrition.

“When you think about the social and psychological role that food plays in our lives – gathering with friends and family for dinner, celebrating holidays and breaking bread together, spending time together – it’s comforting to have your favorite food and drink on the go,” she said. “And it’s no different for our astronauts in space on long-duration missions.”

Interstellar Lab, a team from Florida, won the grand prize with its modular, bioregenerative system for producing fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms and insects.

Green, chief of staff of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, emphasized the importance of challenges in solving complex problems, calling them “the best place to start” for students and professors. Science plays a big role in that, Green added.

“It is often important to collaborate with our friends in science to study a difficult problem that we may not know how to solve,” he said.

Gatens agreed.

“The partnership here at Ohio State was really important to this challenge.”

The audience listened to the speakers with rapt attention. While the attendees were mostly graduate students, faculty, and contractors, two stood out: 12-year-old Molly Pease and her mother Colette.

After watching Apollo 13 for the first time last year, Molly admitted to being “obsessed” with space. Her mother came across the symposium and noticed that it was open to the public.

“We were just at the NASA booth and were so excited,” she said. “All you had to do was say ‘NASA’ and the coolness factor went up exponentially. It was the chance of a lifetime for them to see the director of the International Space Station.”