How NASA’s space-driven biotech encourages food innovators to reach for the stars [Interview]

Food manufacturers and brands are constantly looking for ways to reduce their environmental footprint and achieve sustainability. For Dr Lynn Rothschild, senior research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, ensuring that any solution is sustainable is simply non-negotiable.

“I call this approach radical sustainability,” she says. “When we are going off planet, we have to account for every carbon atom and every water molecule. The space sector is all about ensuring that a solution works, and about measuring every input and output.”

In her presentation at Fi Europe, Rothschild plans to share some innovative space mission solutions, and also demonstrate the critical role that food innovation will play in facilitating future exploration.

Evolution and the origins of life

Rothschild has dedicated her career to better understanding evolution and the origins of life, first through studying organisms such as protozoa – single-celled microorganisms that feed on organic matter – and algae. She came to NASA in the late 1980s, and in the late 1990s she was heavily involved in founding the agency’s astrobiology programme, which focuses on understanding the origin, future, and distribution of life in the universe. 

“To do this, we only have one data point – planet Earth,” she notes. “We have to first understand how life began and how it evolved here.”

Rothschild was particularly interested in applying molecular techniques to approach some of these fundamental questions. “In the early 2000s, I was directed to start a programme on synthetic biology,” she says. “Half of my lab is now very much focused on the origin of life and evolution, and what the limits to life might be. At the same time, we also look at what NASA’s specific technology needs where life is the solution.”

Innovative solutions for future space missions

Some of these needs led to the development of solutions that touch on food innovation. One idea, for example, involves building habitats off-planet with fungal mycelia. “We are now in phase III of this project, which is a very big deal,” says Dr Rothschild. The phase III award will provide $2 million over two years for further technological development, with a view to a potential future demonstration mission.

The ultimate goal would be to efficiently transport and “grow” these extraterrestrial fungal homes for future missions, thus overcoming a major obstacle. Getting launched off the surface of the Earth requires massive amounts of fuel – keeping the payload light is vital to ensure cost-effective missions. “Imagine being able to launch a seed into space,” says Rothschild. “If it can then grow in material that you find off planet, you’ll have solved this problem of upmass.”

Rothschild was also recently able to run an experiment with the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), using a satellite mission to test several synthetic biology tools. “This worked brilliantly,” she says. “This was in fact the first synthetic biology experiment on a free flyer in low Earth orbit.”

Looking to the food sector for inspiration

In addition to sharing these exciting developments at Fi Europe, Rothschild also hopes to draw inspiration from the food industry. “Space missions are very good at things like recycling water and feeding astronauts through a tube,” she says. “But what about long haul missions? What about flavour? What about flexibility and choice?”

Rothschild lists the numerous constraints to feeding astronauts. Bread is no good because particles are an inhalation hazard in microgravity. For the same reason, salt and pepper need to be in liquid form. Items like fresh vegetables and meat are too heavy and additionally, there is no refrigeration currently planned for upcoming Artemis missions.

“I try to keep track of what is happening in terms of flavours, mushroom meat, single cell proteins, algae, that sort of thing,” she says. “I’m very interested in innovations that can be taken to space, because on a two and a half-year roundtrip to Mars, you simply don’t want to prepackage every meal.”

This is where Rothschild will invite the food industry to imagine the kinds of solutions required to facilitate a mission to Mars. “I hope to take away from Fi Europe radically different ideas,” she says. “These are the people that know what people like to eat, and who are tracking the latest taste trends. Imagine being able to print a steak on Mars from single cell inks for example. Or if it’s your birthday … what if we could produce chocolate flavouring from a specific bacterium?”

Lynn Rothschild will be speaking at this year’s Fi Europe on the subject of ‘Out of this world innovations: How space-driven biotech could shape a sustainable future’.

Rothschild is an astrobiologist focused on the origin and evolution of life, as well as the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration. She was awarded the Isaac Asimov Award from the American Humanist Association and is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.