The food and water systems astronauts will need to travel to places like Mars

21.08.2023 - 11:53 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest

Header image: The prototype space greenhouse developed by the TIME SCALE project showed that it is possible to recycle nutrients and water to grow food. Image credit – Karoliussen

Words by Jonathan O’Callaghan

If humans are to travel to distant destinations in space like the moon or Mars, they’ll need ways to live for long periods of time. And one of the key challenges of that includes how to have safe food and water to eat and drink when far from Earth.

On the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts are able to get resupplies from Earth from cargo spacecraft visiting the space station, taking just six hours to get there. But the journey time to Mars is eight months minimum. And if you’re on the Red Planet, you need to go it alone.

Scientists have been working to address this problem. They’ve been looking at ways for astronauts to produce their own clean water and grow their own food. And just as importantly, they’re making sure any risk of contamination is reduced, to keep astronauts as safe and healthy as possible on long-duration missions.

Clean water

Drinking water is something many of us take for granted on Earth, but on space missions it is harder to come by. The ISS recycles much of its water using chemicals, but it still relies on sizeable shipments of water from Earth to give its astronauts access to clean water.

A project called BIOWYSE hoped to find a solution to the water problem for long missions. The project looked at ways to store water for extended periods of time, monitor it in real time for contamination from microbes, and then dispense clean drinking water whenever needed by decontaminating the water with UV light rather than chemicals.

‘We wanted a system where you take it from A to Z, from storing