In the Future, Astronauts Might Be Eating Minerals Mined from Asteroids

Researchers from Western University’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration might have come up with an interesting way for astronauts to get the vital nutrients they need while on long space missions: harvesting edible biomass off of asteroids.

Their study was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. In it, they propose a clever trick that can help cut down on the number of resupply missions from Earth, which are wildly expensive logistical nightmares. The researchers theorize that carbonaceous chondrite asteroids like Bennu, an asteroid that passes by Earth every six years or so, could be harvested for all the delicious organic matter and water buried in them. This would happen thanks to a process called pyrolysis, which is when organic compounds are broken down in an oxygen-free environment. The asteroid’s guts would be converted into hydrocarbons which would serve as food for specially engineered microbes, which would then produce biomass that astronauts would munch on.  

A lot of the research took inspiration from the military’s conversion of waste into useful resources like military rations. Functionally, the process is a lot like how bacteria can be used to break down plastic, just a set of plastic it’s an ancient rock that’s been floating in the cold void of space for centuries. Assuming their theory can one day be turned into a reality, some screenwriter will inevitably use this as the inciting incident of a space zombie movie. 

An asteroid like the aforementioned Bennu could theoretically yield anywhere between 50 to 6,550 metric tons of biomass. That can, again theoretically, potentially support an astronaut for somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 and 17,000 years. The first space person to live to 600 will definitely have enough food.

The implications of this research are far-reaching. By converting a space rock into edible matter, deep space travel that takes decades or even centuries suddenly seems just a tiny bit more feasible. Of course, the researchers say a lot more research is needed before any of this is even attempted. And who knows, maybe the resulting food ends up being nutritious and life-sustaining but sucks so bad that no one would dare eat it? It’s one thing to make a new kind of food that can help you live in the harshness of space, it’s another thing to make that living worthwhile. Maybe asteroid biomass is so disgusting that dying of starvation in the inky blackness of space doesn’t seem so bad.