Alt-meat for astronauts: Eternal explores fungal-based space food from new facility at NASA Kennedy Space Center

11 Apr 2022 --- After winning the first phase of the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge, fungal-based food ingredients player Eternal is continuing its research efforts to support the astronauts’ nutrition on space vessels and other planets – as part of its ongoing collaboration with the Human Spaceflight Laboratory. It is additionally scaling toward the Earth-bound commercialization of its flagship product.

Eternal has been working on an appliance that – when combined with the life support systems of the spaceship – will be able to create a fungal based ingredient, Mycofood, which is versatile enough to allow crews to “print” a variety of recipes by just pressing a button.

“For the earth side application, the ability of producing food with minimum resources can be of enormous help in disaster relief, when many times there’s no supply chain to kickstart the food production,” Clara Peydro, account executive at Eternal, tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“In parallel to our NASA work, we are working on standard plants to commercialize Mycofood with food producers. There’s already a protein shake using our ingredient, and we are in conversation with a number of F&B companies who want to improve their veggie/vegan recipes.”

Peydro touts the flexibility and efficiency of Eternal’s innovation. “We work with an incredibly efficient microorganism that grows really fast. Iit replicates its volume five times per day.”

Eternal is focused on scaling fungal-based proteins that can be produced aboard space ships to create burgers and even ice cream.Food at the push of a button
Eternal secured its place in the Space Life Science Lab (SLSL) in NASA Kennedy Space Center as part of the ongoing collaboration with the University of North Dakota (UND) Human Spaceflight Laboratory.

With the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge playing a protagonic role in this collaboration, Eternal started to utilize this new facility to pursue the efforts in making possible for crews to have a nutritious source of fresh food in deep space, be that in other planets or in spaceships.

Pablo de León, a long-term NASA collaborator – and confessed science-fiction fan – has a thorough understanding of how spaceship systems work. He currently oversees that Eternal’s appliance has the right inputs and additional ingredients to operate.

He comments that the concept of “printing a meal by pressing a button” captured his imagination, bringing him memories of his youth watching Star Trek.

“Creating a burger or an ice cream should be as easy as choosing between a Latte or an Americano in a coffee machine,” remarks Miguel Neumann, Eternal’s CFO.

Overcoming taste challenges
The invention patented by Eternal is complex and yet compact, making it ideal for confined spaces – be that deep sea, Antarctica or space.

“There was an interesting comment from someone in Danone, when we discussed our product in a recent conference in San Francisco. He was saying that the solution to avoid bland, tasteless, boring food was a bland, tasteless and boring ingredient,” says Peydro.

“The key to the variety of food products that our prototype can make is that Mycofood is versatile enough to be used in savory and sweet recipes.

Out-of-this-world nourishment
The heightened interest in sustainable space travel continues to ramp up interest in scaling novel food-tech solutions that enable the creation of protein without animal inputs. This is currently being explored by industry pioneers, including Nature’s Fynd, which harnesses volcanic microbes in unlocking a new class of protein production.

Israeli cultured meat start-up Aleph Farms previously spearheaded a bold ambition to help accelerate extraterrestrial cell-based protein production – a primary barrier for long-term space missions – to one day nourish space travelers as they journey to Mars and the Moon.

Its program “Aleph Zero” – which is backed by food producers such as Cargill, Migros and the Strauss Group – supports deep-space exploration and the potential colonization of new planets.

Finnish food tech company Solar Foods also made similar moves to scale its alternative protein – Solein – made out of microbes cultured with electricity and air. Construction of its “Factory 01” began in 2021, with production anticipated to begin in the first half of 2023.

In other developments, microgreens packed with antioxidants have gained popularity as a functional food that could help contribute to a balanced diet for astronauts. A US study recently revealed how these tiny but mighty plants could unlock nutrition challenges in long-term space missions. 

By Benjamin Ferrer