>> Pat Ryan: The Modern Science Laboratory is designed
to spend almost two years analyzing rock and soil samples
to see if Mars is going to be favorable for microbial life
or to preserve any end to preserve any clues they find
about possible life that was there in the past.
The robotic missions that are like this one are being worked
from NASA centers all over the country.
They are stepping stones to future missions to Mars.
In fact, right here at the Johnson Space Center,
there are teams that are working to develop the food
that human crews would eat on a mission that would take them
to Mars and this morning we're going to learn more
about that effort from Dr. Michele Perchonok
who is the Advanced Food Technology Project Scientist.
Good morning.
>> Dr. Michele Perchonok: Good morning.
>> Pat: What how long has NASA been working on issues
about food for a mission to Mars?
>> Dr. Perchonok: Well I've been at NASA for twelve years
and they've been working on it a lot longer than that
so I'm going to say about twenty years.
>> Pat: I assume that we've taken whatever we've learned
feeding crews on previous flights, on space station,
on space shuttle and prior missions is being rolled
in here.
What are the basics in trying to develop something like this?
>> Dr. Perchonok: Well we have actually we call it a two
pronged food system so first is the packaged food system
that we already have and are using
on International Space Station but there's a little bit
of a difference on International Space Station our food only has
to last about eighteen months or so.
>> Pat: Good.
>> Dr. Perchonok: but on a Mars mission they have to last
about five years so that takes into account the fact
that they'll probably preposition the food
on orbit before the crew gets there, the time it takes for us
to make the food, as well as of course the time that they have
to eat it so five year shelf life not seen anywhere else
except maybe our military.
The other piece of the food system is once we're
on the surface we can do what we call a bioregenerative food
system, that's growing in garmental chambers fresh fruits
and vegetables, either growing or brining up in bulk,
things like soy beans, wheat berries, peanuts
and then processing those into ingredients such as tofu,
or wheat flower into bread, or into pasta and then
of course the vegetables and fruit can be used for just pick
and eat, or to process maybe into a tomato sauce,
or into cooked vegetables so the packaged food side
of things yes we have some experience but we have
to go further but the bioregenerative side we're
really doing very little of that right now.
>> Pat: Are you thinking in terms of growing it in the soil
on Mars, growing food there?
>> Dr. Perchonok: No, so the thought is
that we will instead be using environmental chambers
which will control the temperature, the humidity,
the lighting and then they would be grown hydroponically
so that we can recycle the water and nutrients would be put
into the water and also because these chambers are limited
in size we would probably also be looking at dwarf
like plants, so smaller version.
>> Pat: tiny vegetables.
>> Dr. Perchonok: Well, cherry tomatoes instead
of regular tomatoes,
cherry tomato plants might only grow one to two feet,
whereas regular tomato plants could grow four feet or so.
>> Pat: In thinking about this I was thinking in terms
of feeding a crew on the way to Mars and that sounds to me
like there are certain things you just have to do
without because you can't refrigerate
and you can't carry that much.
>> Dr. Perchonok: Right so on the way to Mars,
which is about a six month trip, and on the way home,
which is also a six month trip,
providing that the planets are aligned
in their closest orientation,
we would use a food system very similar
to International Space Station
so it would be a packaged food system
where they're individually packaged items
for each crew member so it would be a serving of meatloaf,
or a serving of broccoli au gratin
and they would just basically rehydrate or heat that food.
>> Pat: Is there enough, how much space does that much food
for that size crew take up?
>> Dr. Perchonok: It's a lot so if you assume
and we don't know the crew size but if you assume a crew of six
and you assume 1,000 day mission, then we're talking
about almost or about twenty thousand pounds
of packaged food.
Now that doesn't assume any of the bioregenerative part.
Twenty thousand pounds of food, the volume we calculated that
and we think it's about the amount
of three large refrigerators full so we're talking
about a small room or a large closet worth of food
so doesn't sound like a lot but that's really, really,
really tightly packed.
>> Pat: Apparently it would seem to me that it would have to take
up a lot more room than that.
>> Dr. Perchonok: Gut feel yes
and so you know we've done the calculations
and again its taking into a lot of assumptions
that we don't necessarily know the real answer
so how is it going to be packaged?
Are there going to be racks or other sort of secondary places
to stow them, in that case it would take more room
so that kind of information we don't have
yet so this is clearly just the food, nothing else,
so if you're going to pack it into something and then pack it
into something else, or you have to add foam to it
to protect the packaging, that all is extra space.
>> Pat: When you're thinking about being able
to provide a crew with all the vitamins and minerals
and nutrients that they need, do you assume that it all comes
from meals that they eat or are there other supplements
that help you do that?
>> Dr. Perchonok: So currently on ISS,
International Space Station, the only supplement
that the crew is required to take is vitamin D
because the only way to really get vitamin D in any quantity is
from the sun and obviously they're not having any sunshine.
There are ways in the food to do it but not as easily.
We have to make the assumption to try
to give them all the nutrients they need, all of the vitamins
and minerals and protein, carbohydrate, fat, calories etc.
through the food because ironically, or much more
of a challenge, is that nutrients
in a pill actually break down faster than the nutrients
in the food so chemistry happens whether it's
in a pill form or the food form.
It seems like that matrix
in the food is actually protecting the vitamins
so if we can bring up enough food with enough quantity
of vitamins and minerals in that food we're ok.
The problem is in the packaged food system
to make sure its stable without a refrigerator
or freezer we have to process it
and that process often will be partly heat
to kill the micro-organisms, or radiation to kill them,
or drying it down to allow
so that the micro-organisms can't grow.
Now we have new technologies we're looking
at microwave sterilization, high pressure,
which look at killing the micro-organisms either
by through the pressure of breaking the cell structure
or microwaves but either way we're introducing a step
that can kill not only the micro-organisms but some
of the nutrients so we have that challenge in there.
>> Pat: And that's part of what we do in the station food now
with the freeze dried food and thermostabalized food.
>> Dr. Perchonok: Correct, correct.
All of that is already on station and one
of our studies is looking at not only how much
of the nutrients you lose through the processing but then
if you look at them at ambient or room temperature storage
for one year or three years how much more are you losing
because unfortunately that chemistry continues to happen
and we lose more nutrients.
>> Pat: Does that mean you have to add more nutrients
to them ahead of time to account for the degradation?
>> Dr. Perchonok: So that's one way to do it and we would call
that fortification and actually in our beverages
that are fortified because the beverages were dried
and then you add the vitamins to it,
they actually do maintain more vitamin stability.
The other way now is to protect those vitamins:
Can you encapsulate them?
Can you do something else to them
so that they are more protected and think of it as almost
like in a shell so that they don't react with the water
or the oxygen out there and allow them to stay more stable
for longer periods of time.
>> Pat: It's very interesting to think about that
down to the details but we sucked all
of the excitement out of food too.
[laughter] Are the crew members going
to get bored having what I guess is a narrow selection
over the course of two or three years?
>> Dr. Perchonok: So that is another study we're doing is
looking at how much variety do you need?
How can you sort of mix it up a little bit
with different condiments?
How do you make it more special
with extra you know special meals whether its holidays
or birthdays or just say it's the first Sunday of the month
but right now we have about 180 food items
on International Space Station and that seems to be well
and then we have another hundred or so items from Russia
and some more from Europe so we're probably
at about a three hundred number and that seems
to be the right number for a six month mission.
What do you need for a two and a half year mission and that's one
of the reasons why we're looking
at this bioregenerative food system
because it introduces a little bit more variety,
it introduces a little bit more creativity,
well you know tonight I'm going to put
in my pasta sauce bell peppers but not onions
and the next night I'm going to put in onions
and not bell peppers so it's a little bit different
but yes they are going to get bored, it's not like here
on earth where we can say I don't feel like eating anything
out of my refrigerator so I'm going to go
to a restaurant tonight.
>> Pat: If you get bored with the food as a crew member might
in this circumstance do you find that they don't eat as much
as they're supposed to?
>> Dr. Perchonok: That is what we're finding
that they don't eat as much when they're bored with the food,
that the acceptability of the food goes down and so
and that's a big concern because this food allows them
to perform well, keep healthy and more importantly it helps
to mitigate the bone loss and muscle mass loss
that they do experience in microgravity.
>> Pat: What kinds of things do you have on the menu
at this point, if we were launching
to Mars tomorrow what kind
of food would be available for a crew?
>> Dr. Perchonok: Well right now
of our sixty plus thermostabalized items,
which is basically canned food in a pouch,
only seven of them have a five year shelf life
and they all happen to be meat items so brisket, pork chops,
meatloaf, so not a lot of variety
but we're working towards trying to get that improved
and making sure that they have a good variety of items just
like they do on International Space Station
from chocolate pudding cake for dessert,
to having scrambled eggs or a cinnamon scone for breakfast
and you know fruit you know strawberries or whatever
so we're working towards it.
>> Pat: Now in this case you got maybe twenty years
or more before we're ready to make that trip is
that why we need to be preparing the menu now for a trip
that doesn't launch until the twenty thirties?
>> Dr. Perchonok: Well you're right, we have a lot of time,
however, the bioregenerative food system piece we're
estimating could take ten if not fifteen years to develop
because not only do we have to determine what we want to do
with it, what we want to grow but then what do you need
to process and what equipment do you need for that
and you'll have a galley that I describe as a sort
of a twenty first century galley
but a fifteenth century operations
because you may have a juicer or a food processor but meanwhile
if you're making bread you're either going to have to knead it
by hand or have a bread maker,
or if you want grated carrots you're going to have
to grate them, you can't go to the grocery store and pick
up those grated carrots so there's a lot involved
in the bioregenerative food system.
So what we're trying to do is say ok we're going to sort
of put that out in the future
and not necessarily do it right away but right now let's look
at that packaged food system
because if we can extend the shelf life now that makes
that if you think about it
if you can have a higher quality food up front
so that it doesn't it's still good in five years,
think about how good it would be in one year or two years
for International Space Station so we're working on that first.
We hope to have a five year shelf life food system ready.
Knowing how to do it, not necessarily having developed all
of those two hundred plus products by about twenty twenty
and then we can take some time to develop all
of those formulations, we don't call them recipes,
we call them formulations.
>> Pat: It all sounds very interesting and be interesting
to see how it turns out, what comes up next.
Thanks for your for bringing us up to date on that.
>> Dr. Perchonok: You're welcome.
>> Pat: Michele Perchonok is the Advanced Food Technology
Project Scientist.