Spirulina as space food
As water is a limiting factor on Mars, lots of questions related to how to grow food on the Red Planet remain unsolved. On this purpose, current scientific researches focus on developing technologies to grow highly nutritive food requiring small amount of water. One possible option is spirulina! Indeed, those cyanobacteria are highly prospective for astronauts’ alimentation during future martian explorations. Not only can it be taken as a dietary supplement enriched in proteins, but it has also therapeutic properties.
In that sense, we propose to establish a spirulina culture during our mission. The experiment will study the effect of space mission conditions on the culture system, including the small amount of space, materials and water available, the monitoring of the system and finally considering alternatives to improve the culture in such conditions.
