Yeast on the Final Frontier

As human space exploration eyes destinations beyond the Moon, the challenge of provisioning astronauts is becoming an ever-growing concern.

Feeding a single astronaut in orbit currently costs an estimated £20,000 per day. Hauling all supplies from Earth simply won’t scale for deep-space missions. An alternative source of these supplies is needed – and microbes, yeasts in particular, could fit the bill.

A team led by Imperial College London has launched a miniature laboratory into orbit to test whether engineered yeasts can produce not only food, but also fuel, pharmaceuticals and bioplastics, under microgravity conditions. The project, conducted in partnership with Cranfield University and space-tech firms Frontier Space and ATMOS Space Cargo, hitched a ride aboard Europe’s first commercial returnable spacecraft, Phoenix, launched via SpaceX on 21 April.

“Carrying everything we need to survive in space just isn’t practical,” says team lead Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, who is building on his research at Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein. “But if a few well-designed cells could churn out food and medicine from available resources, the economics – and the possibilities – change dramatically.”

At the heart of the experiment lies precision fermentation, the process of programming microbes to produce complex molecules with efficiency. On Earth, this technique is already being used to brew everything from dairy-free milk to animal-free meat. But in space, such microbial multitasking could prove vital to long-duration missions – or even life on Mars.

Once returned to Earth, the microbes will undergo detailed analysis to understand how the stresses of launch, microgravity, and cosmic radiation affect their productivity and viability. Insights gained will inform not only space exploration, but also future Earth-based biotechnology – where sustainable food and material production remain a pressing concern.

“We’re excited that this project makes use of academic and industry expertise in physics, engineering, biotech and space science,” concludes Ledesma-Amaro. “If just a handful of cultivated cells could provide all our food, pharmaceuticals, fuels and bioplastics using freely available resources, that would bring the future closer.”