Edible 3D printing and manufacturing for Space industry.
NASA FOOD SCIENCE RESEARCH
Crew health is critical to any successful mission, and maintaining astronauts’ nutrition gets harder the further they get from Earth and any chance of a resupply mission. A crewed mission to Mars, for example, will have to pack food for up to five years in space. The food must stay as fresh as possible, provide precise amounts of needed nutrients, create as little trash as possible, and be appetizing enough for the crew to keep eating it. The intent is to eventually provide astronauts with precise, personalized, 3D-printed nutrition in microgravity, where crew time is limited and cooking is not an option, with a focus on additive manufacturing, robotics, automation, and software development.
ENDLESS
APPLICATIONS
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Building food from scratch with a 3D printer could deliver starch, protein, and fat, creating properly textured edible structures that would be supplemented with micronutrients, flavor, and aroma delivered by inkjet technology.
A recovery machine can personalize a breakfast or late lunch nutrition snack depending on a person’s individual needs, such as genetics, metabolism, and blood markers. The machine can be connected it to physiological data like heart rate, calories burned, hydration levels, in gyms. Right after a workout, people can get a personalized snack that covers 30 percent of daily recommended nutrition values.
US ARMY RESEARCH
The US Army is carrying out scientific research to provide personalized food for their soldiers. According to a food technologist leading the team at the Army’s Natick research center, a sensor installed in soldiers’ bodies could detect their specific dietary needs. This sensor would be interfaced with a food 3D printer, in order to produce customized meals.
Our technology can collect the personal profile of soldiers, genetics, lactose intolerance or a gene presence that may trigger it, diabetes, and physical activity over the last seven days, to make the recovery snack.
MEDICINE & BIOPRINTING
It can be very useful to make softer meals for people with chewing or digestion problems, especially elders. In addition, medicine can be presented in the shape of yummy food, instead of pills or powder; it can be helpful in other fields, as well. 3D printed food may also represent a hope for the world hunger crisis in the future. That is why cooking robots could be more and more popular in the future.
Even with so much potential on Earth, the truly revolutionary 3D-printing developments will occur in space. Tissues and organs needed for drug discoveries or human parts can be grown in space, 3D bioprinters are now printing diseased human heart cells in space. 3D printing done in a microgravity environment effectively maintains the shape and form of the printed tissues. Unlike on earth where it is more difficult to manufacture the soft human tissues due to the destructive pull of gravity. The foundation in this 3D printing is the same thing we’re doing.