Future astronauts may need to manufacture meals from whatever a spacecraft can recycle. A NASA-supported research team has now produced protein-rich cookies from a carbon source that normally ends up in a trash container.
By Object51.com. All rights reserved.
Every kilogram launched into space costs money, occupies storage and requires fuel. On a short mission, astronauts can carry food from Earth. On a voyage to Mars, however, the crew would spend months traveling beyond the reach of rapid resupply. Packaging, broken equipment and food waste would accumulate while fresh ingredients became increasingly valuable.
That problem has led researchers toward a strange possibility: what if yesterday’s waste could become tomorrow’s dinner?
A team at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, working on technology for NASA’s deep-space ambitions, has developed a system that uses engineered yeast to transform molecules recovered from plastic and agricultural waste into edible components. The project has already produced small, protein-rich cookies called microbites.
The researchers are not asking astronauts to chew bottles. Their process breaks waste into simpler chemical building blocks, feeds selected molecules to microorganisms and then turns the resulting biological material into food.
It still sounds like science fiction. In a closed spacecraft, it may eventually become a practical survival system.
The impossible arithmetic of a Mars mission
A crew traveling far from Earth needs calories, protein, fats, vitamins and flavor. It also needs packaging, clothing, tools and replacement parts. Almost everything brought aboard eventually becomes waste, and there is nowhere to throw it away.
Current spacecraft recycle water and manage carbon dioxide, but food remains largely a one-way supply. It is launched, eaten and depleted. The packaging is left behind as dead weight.
Long-duration missions require a more circular system. Plants can provide food and oxygen, but large growing areas need water, light, time and reliable equipment. Stored meals are dependable, yet nutrients can degrade over years. Resupply may be impossible during an emergency.
The new approach treats carbon as a reusable resource. Plastic contains carbon. So do plant stalks, leaves and many forms of organic waste. If those materials can be safely dismantled and rebuilt, they could provide feedstock for microbes that manufacture useful nutrients.
Project leader Lahiru Jayakody summarized the idea simply in the American Chemical Society’s report on the research: plastic is carbon, and food is also carbon. The difficult part is converting one into the other without carrying unwanted chemicals into the final product.
How a bottle becomes a biological ingredient
The process begins with polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET, a common plastic used in bottles and food packaging. Corn stalks and leaves can also be included as agricultural feedstock.
The waste undergoes a proprietary process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. Water, oxygen, high temperature and pressure break the material down into smaller carbon-containing molecules that microbes can access.
Engineered yeasts then act as microscopic factories. Depending on their programming and the available feedstock, they can convert the molecules into proteins, fats, acids, vitamins or flavor compounds. The resulting biomass is purified and combined with ingredients such as starch, fiber and sweetener.
Finally, the mixture can be shaped with a food printer. The team’s experimental cookies are called µBites, pronounced microbites. They are intended to demonstrate that discarded material can be turned into a recognizable food rather than an unappealing nutrient paste.
The distinction is important. Plastic is not merely ground into a recipe. Its molecular components are separated, transformed by microorganisms and rebuilt into biological products. The original bottle does not survive the process as plastic.
The cookies exist, but no one has eaten them yet
Laboratory data suggest that the experimental food can meet safety requirements, but the cookies have not yet been approved for human tasting. Formal institutional authorization is required before researchers can conduct those tests.
The team has evaluated their aroma, and initial responses were reportedly encouraging. Surveys also suggested that people would be more willing to eat plastic-derived food in resource-limited situations, such as a deep-space mission or disaster zone.
That willingness may depend on language. A “plastic cookie” sounds contaminated even when the chemistry says otherwise. A “microbial protein made from recycled carbon” is more accurate, but less memorable. Public acceptance will require clear evidence about purity, nutrition and long-term health effects.
The Guardian’s account of the project noted the obvious psychological barrier. People may accept fermentation when it produces bread, cheese or beer, yet react differently when the organism’s starting material came from a discarded bottle.
Yeast can make more than survival biscuits
The platform is designed to produce a range of ingredients. The researchers have used biomass to generate a vanilla flavoring and explored production of beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, from ethylene glycol derived from PET.
This flexibility matters because nutrition is not only about calories. Astronauts living in confinement for months or years can experience menu fatigue, reduced appetite and psychological stress. Flavor, texture and variety help maintain health and morale.
A biological manufacturing system could theoretically switch between outputs. One microbial strain might produce protein, another a vitamin and another a familiar flavor. That would turn waste processing into a compact food factory.
The broader concept has been discussed in biotechnology research as a way to connect waste upcycling with food production. A spacecraft is an ideal place to test it because every material has value and disposal options are extremely limited.
Safety is the question that cannot be skipped
PET is useful precisely because it is durable. Bottles can also contain dyes, additives, residues and contaminants collected during use. A process capable of breaking down the main polymer must still prevent those unwanted substances from reaching the food stream.
Researchers will need to demonstrate consistent purification, detect trace contaminants and prove that engineered organisms do not produce harmful byproducts. Nutritional balance will also matter. A food can be rich in protein while lacking essential amino acids, minerals or other nutrients.
Long-term consumption presents another challenge. A short safety test cannot fully answer what happens when a crew eats recycled-carbon foods repeatedly for months. Regulators will want toxicology data, manufacturing standards and reliable methods for monitoring every batch.
There is also a systems problem. If one machine both handles waste and makes food, contamination controls must be exceptionally robust. Spacecraft cannot call a repair technician or discard an entire production line when something goes wrong.
For those reasons, the project remains experimental. The existing cookies are a proof of principle, not a product ready for a supermarket shelf or astronaut menu.
Why Earth may need the technology first
The most dramatic use would be aboard a Mars spacecraft, but the same system could be valuable in isolated environments on Earth. Submarines, polar stations, disaster zones and remote settlements all face limits on storage and resupply.
It could also provide a new route for difficult waste. Conventional recycling often loses quality over repeated cycles, and contaminated plastic may be unsuitable for mechanical reuse. Converting selected waste streams into chemical feedstock could recover value from material that would otherwise be burned or buried.
This does not mean plastic waste has become harmless. Collecting, sorting and processing it still requires energy. Preventing unnecessary plastic production remains more efficient than inventing increasingly elaborate ways to manage it afterward.
Food scarcity is also rarely caused by a total absence of global calories. War, poverty, distribution failures and political decisions often prevent existing food from reaching people. A sophisticated bioreactor cannot solve those problems by itself.
The technology’s strength is different. It could create nutrition where transport is impossible, local agriculture is damaged or waste is one of the few available carbon sources.
A closed loop that turns rubbish into resilience
Deep-space missions force engineers to reconsider the idea of garbage. On Earth, waste disappears from view when a truck collects it. In a spacecraft, every discarded item remains inside the same small world as the crew.
If this research succeeds, packaging could have two lives. It would first protect food or equipment. Later, its carbon could feed microorganisms that produce new nutrients. The result would not be perpetual motion, and the system would still need energy and additional ingredients, but it could greatly reduce the mass required from Earth.
The first human taste test will be a symbolic moment. A volunteer will bite into an ordinary-looking cookie whose molecular history began inside a plastic container. Whether it tastes good may matter less than whether the person feels comfortable swallowing it.
For astronauts millions of kilometers from home, that hesitation may eventually disappear. When survival depends on recycling nearly everything, the strangest item on the menu could also be the most valuable.
About the author:
Jabba is an explorer of the unknown, an investigative journalist at heart, and a hunter of the truth that official history prefers to keep silent about. With over 10 years of experience writing alternative analyses and in-depth investigations.
