{"id":4699,"date":"2025-04-22T09:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T09:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=4699"},"modified":"2025-04-22T09:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T09:04:04","slug":"lab-grown-food-heads-to-space-in-breakthrough-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=4699","title":{"rendered":"Lab-grown food heads to space in breakthrough experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>A European Space Agency (ESA) mission has launched an experiment into orbit to test the viability of producing lab-grown food in space.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative aims to reduce the cost of feeding astronauts, which currently stands at up to \u00a320,000 per day, and to support future long-duration space missions.<\/p>\n<p>The project involves Bedford-based company Frontier Space in collaboration with Imperial College London. A small bioreactor carrying genetically engineered yeast cells was sent aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n<p>The payload, housed in a cube satellite aboard Europe&#8217;s first commercial returnable spacecraft, Phoenix, will orbit the Earth for three hours before splashing down off the coast of Portugal for recovery and analysis.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment is part of a broader plan to eventually develop food production systems for use on the International Space Station and future missions to the Moon and Mars.<\/p>\n<p>According to project leader Dr Aqeel Shamsul, lab-based food manufacturing in space could drastically reduce dependence on Earth-based supply missions.<\/p>\n<p>Using precision fermentation, the yeast is engineered to produce food ingredients such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.<\/p>\n<p>Once returned, data from the experiment will help scientists develop a more advanced bioreactor for future missions.<\/p>\n<p>While similar technologies have been used on Earth\u2014lab-grown chicken is approved for sale in the US and Singapore\u2014this is the first known test of such a system in microgravity conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Imperial College\u2019s culinary designer, Jakub Radzikowski, is also developing recipes using analogous ingredients from fungi, with the aim of one day producing culturally familiar meals for astronauts.<\/p>\n<p>Britain\u2019s first astronaut, Dr Helen Sharman, praised the concept, noting its potential to improve nutrition and morale on long-duration spaceflights.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers believe lab-grown food could eventually provide a more sustainable and health-conscious alternative for space exploration.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A European Space Agency (ESA) mission has launched an experiment into orbit to test the viability of producing lab-grown food in space. The initiative aims to reduce the cost of feeding astronauts, which currently stands at up to \u00a320,000 per day, and to support future long-duration space missions. The project involves Bedford-based company Frontier Space [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}