Students from the University of Copenhagen revealed their offer for producing the food on Mars. In the frame of the project ‘CosmoCrops’, Danish scientists used the abilities of Cyanobacteria to make not only food but other things, screwdriver, e.g. All the astronauts need on Mars is bacteria and the 3D printer.
Space bacteria will be able to produce dinner for Mars astronauts. The researchers from Denmark may have a solution to light weighting the luggage–they offer to re-programme the bacteria correctly, which make able it to produce the basic elements of everything that astronauts need in space, from tool-box to food.
Professor of planetary biology Kai Finster from Aarhus University explains that the method is not yet ready to take onboard a spaceship but the idea is brilliant. Cyanobacteria produces sugar from sunlight and CO2, and Bacillus subtilis then use it to produce whatever we want. The only problem left to be solved is an intensity of the sunlight on Mars. It is less intense than on Earth, and the science has to take that into account.
In short, the process of producing anything from the bacteria is rather simple. If we need a plastic tool, then we can grab a Petri dish filled with bacteria that can make bio-plastics and place the bacteria in a bioreactor, where the sugar-producing cyanobacteria are already present. The bio-plastic bacteria use the sugar from cyanobacteria to produce bio-plastics that can then be used in a 3D-printer.
