Joanne Cleaver, contributing editor 2025-04-24 06:54:22
THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING PRODUCTS THAT WILL WORK IN OUTER SPACE INJECTS ROCKET FUEL INTO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOR ALT-PROTEIN PRODUCERS
The night sky stretches endlessly above the wide horizons of the Alberta prairie. As a teen, Gavin Schneider scanned those stars above his family’s wheat fields, wondering what worlds might lie far out beyond his view.
Now, he’s entrenched in the far-flung ambitions of space exploration and all the engineering required to allow space explorers to live for months — even years — beyond earth.
Schneider is CEO of Maia Farms, a startup that develops mycelium for protein production. Maia partnered with Ecoation, a plant-yield boosting platform, to take the top prize in the Canadian Space Agency’s Deep Space Food Challenge: Ecoation built the incubator that grew food based on Maia’s formulations.
“I got the inspiration while sitting on a tractor, late at night, under the star canopy,” Schneider says. “Space exploration might be a distant thought, but when you attach it to food, and as we expand human civilization, everybody needs to eat and that’s a core challenge of any exploration.”
“Over thousands of years, as humans have explored new territory, they’ve always had to bring food, and food technology, with them,” he continues. “People are making huge strides into exploring the universe right now. The next steps are people growing mushrooms on the moon. For myself, growing up in a small town with a dream of being an astronaut farmer, it’s possible to break into an industry that may seem far-fetched. It’s very possible.”
That possibility exists at the intersection of alternative protein innovators and competitive challenges sponsored by space agencies and universities. The challenges aim to catalyze the innovation of future foods that could be produced in the closed ecosystems of spaceships and space stations on the moon and Mars, as well as in nearly as-isolated remote reaches of Earth.
Commercialization is an intended byproduct, especially with the healthy dose of sunlight provided by successful participation in a challenge.
SHOOTING FOR THE STARS
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration sponsors challenges of all sorts on an ongoing basis. Beginning in 2021, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., partnered with the Canadian Space Agency on the Deep Space Food Challenge.
The program aimed to answer one fundamental, universal question: What’s for dinner?
After a long day of running experiments, monitoring life-support systems and communicating with comrades back on earth, space explorers want to kick back with a toothsome meal, says Angela Herblet, lead challenge manager for the Deep Space Food Challenge at NASA.
“The crew are human, too,” Herblet says. “Astronauts still want something that tastes good. And variety. The system has to have a pantry of options for the crew.”
That takes more than loading some powdered lentil soup into the cargo bay.
By definition, “deep space” missions last weeks or even years, so they must include a self-sustaining ecosystem that produces food. While the Deep Space Food Challenge invited food technology and formulations of all sorts, NASA was especially keen to learn about new ways that missions could produce protein.
The constraints of building food systems for space are implacable: The food system must be compatible with the living environment, produce minimal or no waste and work with only the resources on board. But meet those criteria, and the sky is the limit.
“We know we need a future food system, but we don’t necessarily know what it looks like,” Herblet explains. “It has to be reliable, stable and safe to operate. The food that comes out of it has to be acceptable to the crew.”
But the systems didn’t have to be fully conceived to be part of the Deep Space Food Challenge because the challenge was intended to find or catalyze development of brand-new technologies, including prototypes. “We’re thinking further down the road,” says Herblet, for potential use in missions that won’t launch for years or even decades.
The three-phase challenge invited ideas, accompanied by a rationale for their designs. Semifinalists then developed prototypes and demonstrated their systems to the judging panel. Finalists brought their work to the food lab at The Ohio State University, where they fine-tuned their systems and tested them with student “simunauts.”
The student testers ran the technologies for six weeks, communicating with product designers only electronically, as astronauts would while millions of miles from earth. The students summarized their experiences to the judges, which included investors, scientists and former astronauts. And they tested the food innovations for themselves.
“We wanted to understand what it would take to get from raw output to a consumable product,” Herblet says. “We gave the teams a limited pantry, with condiments, hot sauce, recipes and tortillas. And that’s what the testers ate.”
American winners were announced in August 2024. Two of the three international finalists designed protein production systems: the winner, Solar Foods, of Finland; and runner-up Mycorena, of Sweden. (The third was focused on optimizing plant growth.)
NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge was a must-win for Finnish Solar Foods, says Arttu Luukanen, the company’s senior vice president of space and defense.
“As a European company, we were not eligible for prize money,” Luukanen says. But, winning such a high-profile contest would be the ultimate proof of the company’s circular production model — and propel it to a top spot for organizations seeking ways to make food under extreme circumstances.
Nasdaq-listed Solar Foods developed Solein, a protein that is produced via fermentation using carbon dioxide. The product is made in a closed loop: The protein is made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide; the astronauts metabolize the protein into more carbon dioxide; the carbon dioxide is captured to produce more protein. (Currently, hydrogen, a byproduct of making oxygen on the space station, is mostly waste.)
“Through a small-scale bioprocess, we tap waste streams into fresh protein and a byproduct, which is water,” Luukanen says.
Space farming is complicated. It’s relatively easy to grow leafy greens and vegetables, say challenge participants, as a space living environment is already a sort of terrarium. The cycle of oxygen-absorbing humans exhaling the nitrogen that plants need to grow is neat, tidy and self-contained. Waste management has been honed over decades of space programs.
Protein is a different animal. It’s not practical to include live animals in the payload, with their attendant requirements for sustenance and slaughter. Insects might seem like a handy solution but introduce an unacceptable level of unpredictability — not to mention the processing required to extract palatable protein.
And any protein production system must be accompanied by waste management methods, and it can’t be overly complicated — astronauts already have plenty of tasks on their plates. Finally, a protein production system must support a variety of outputs or ingredients to allow for variety on the plate.
Luukanen says that Solar Foods quickly realized that it had a uniquely appropriate solution in Solein. “We have the water,” he says. “All of the other entries used water, and we are a water-producing solution.”
Schneider, of Maia Farms, seemed destined for a career that combined agriculture and space exploration: He hails from the tiny town of Vulcan, Alberta, which found itself christened an intergalactic pop culture landmark by way of appearing to be the origin of iconic “Star Trek” character Mr. Spock.
When he heard of the Canadian Deep Space Food Challenge, he was determined to catch that shooting star. Schneider says that his commitment intensified when he learned that the food production systems they developed could be readily adapted for harsh, isolated communities in northern Canada. Much like in space, Arctic regions endure extremes in temperature and daylight, and resupply chains are thin and tenuous. New modes of food production are a prerequisite for expanding the Arctic population.
GROUNDING THE MOONSHOT
Terrestrial applications bridge the relevance between space food systems and earthlings, says NASA’s Herblet, as an integral element of the challenges.
NASA is well aware that challenge participants need to secure capital and customers to convert their breakthroughs into profitable enterprises. So, semifinalists mingle with investors and potential corporate partners at challenge events, Herblet says.
The market for actual space food production is small and narrow at the moment, she says, but the technologies spark insights about broader applications, such as disaster relief.
The final challenge included a twoday symposium with plenty of meetand- greet time allotted. “We made sure we filled the room with opportunity,” Herblet says. “We have to be neutral, as NASA, but we can invite as many people as we can and let the magic happen.”
Protein-centric concepts that made it to the third phase of the NASA challenge included Interstellar Lab, which created a microenvironment that can grow mushrooms and insects; and two companies — Kernel Deltech and Nolux — that each invented a system for cultivating mushroom-based ingredients. NASA awarded each $150,000 and an invitation to compete in the final round.
Space food challenges lift suppliers, too. Matthew Mazer founded Liquid Fungi six years ago to furnish equipment for mushroom and mycelium food developers. Building the custom equipment dreamed up by challenge competitors has become a specialty for Liquid Fungi, Mazer says. New processes, such as imitating photosynthesis with electrical charges, seems impossible until you do it, he says.
Sovereign space agencies aren’t the only game. The new Wageningen Rethink Food challenge, sponsored by the Dutch university, focuses on space farming. Students are asked to both develop a food production system that can be self-fueling within a closed environment and can readily translate to markets on earth, says Marta Eggers, who oversees the program. As with other space food challenges, the panel of judges includes academics, food scientists and investors.
And the Space Foundation, an independent organization, runs programs that promote awareness of how space-related exploration and technology might translate to earthbound relevance.
One of the foundation’s primary goals is to create ways for companies, inventors, investors and innovators to find each other on shared space issues, says Rich Cooper, vice president for strategic communication and space awareness.
With more countries and companies seeking a slice of the galaxy, “this is no longer the sole domain of superpowers,” Cooper says. “There are a number of countries putting up sensors, ground stations and other technologies.”
To that end, the foundation’s Space Commerce Institute works with emerging companies from all industries to help “introduce them to the larger space ecosystem,” Cooper says.
The multi-layered space economy involves a Milky Way of experts, governmental agencies, companies, academics, investors and companies interested in commercial adaptations. The foundation’s annual Space Symposium fosters connections amongst them all, he explains. And, the foundation runs the only program that grants an official certification for space-related products.
TAKING THE GALACTIC HALO
Winning is its own reward, but doesn’t necessarily pave the way for commercial success.
Mycorena, for example, made it to the final round of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge on the strength of its mycoprotein made via fermentation. But when the company succumbed to economic gravity, its assets were acquired by Belgian firm Naplasol.
“The space challenge showcased Mycorena’s innovative edge, but its real value is in its core technology,” says Lowie Vanholme, commercial director of Naplasol, which is incorporating Mycorena’s advances into its products. “We are more focused on making mycoprotein available at industrial scale on earth.”
Unrelated to the NASA challenge, cultivated meat startup Micro Meat appeared to be close to blastoff in 2022 when it signed an agreement with Above: Space Development Corporation to engineer a scaffold that could work in zero-G environments. The company hoped that the advancement would allow space station occupants to grow cultivated meat, explains Vincent Pribble, former COO of Micro Meat.
The economics were compelling: Currently, it costs $2,700 per kilogram to get food — or anything — to space station occupants. For-profit ventures need to whittle operating expenses, and consumables like food are a rich target for cost-cutting. But Micro Meat was undermined by market trends and couldn’t ride out swings in investor interest, Pribble says.
While the space connection polished Micro Meat’s appeal with investors and potential partners, it also distracted potential investors from the core technology and its potential. “It’s the tension between standing out in a crowd and focusing on the fundamentals,” Pribble says.
Still, the halo effect can keep a company’s reputation in orbit for years.
From the start, Solar Foods aimed to win not only recognition — which it did, claiming the Deep Space Food international prize — but also to get on the radar of big companies that produce food for all manner of markets.
“One of our motivations is the visibility we get, the ‘wow’ effect it generates in our audiences. But there needs to be a viable business model,” Luukanen says.
The win “helped us attract funding from the European Space Agency and now we have the ear of others. It gives us the credibility we need,” he adds, noting that Finland, on its own, “doesn’t have a [space] exploration heritage.”
In March, Solar Foods announced a major expansion of its production facilities, along with commitments from two international companies for Solein-based products.
“We weave the space narrative through our brand story. It’s part of our founding. Maia started with this space food challenge,” says Schneider of Maia Farms. “Our customers love it. It’s an engagement point for the industry. Maia was founded by a farmer, an engineer and a scientist who together won a space food competition.”
©Marketing & Technology Group. View All Articles.
WRITTEN IN THE STARS
https://library.alt-meat.net/articles/written-in-the-stars