Skip to content

ESDMD #0305: Food and Nutrition Capabilities for Long-Duration Missions

A food system with the shelf life, variety, safety and nutrition for long Moon and Mars missions, possibly combining stored and grown food (bin 2, rating 9 of 57). ISS relies on frequent resupply of about 200 standard foods with at least 18 months' shelf life, and has no cold stowage. Exploration missions will not have that resupply (Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0305).

Quotations below are from row ESDMD #0305 of the tech gaps spreadsheet. ADD Rev C's Appendix D prints the same table for this gap, and it matches the row field for field (ADD Rev C, p. 214).

Description

"Food system shelf life and production for nutritional stability and current range of foods for sufficient variety (to ensure adequate consumption) do not meet Mars-duration mission needs and present challenges to accomplishing long-duration lunar missions. On ISS, the crew has access to 200 standard foods supplemented with a wide variety of food preference items, which are regularly resupplied to meet nutritional needs. Exploration missions will not support this type of variety, and nutritional content and acceptability will not be maintained for exploration durations (including aggregation). A safe food system that provides adequate variety, food safety (microbial), palatability, and nutrition is needed to prevent menu fatigue/inadequate caloric intake and to support crew health and performance throughout increasingly Earth-independent, resource-constrained, extreme environmental (temperature, pressure, humidity), and long-duration mission operations. Exploration food systems may include a combination of storage and production."

Impacts and benefits: "Without gap closure, the crew may have insufficient nutrition to carry out their tasks and/or crew performance may decrease. Lack of gap closure may result in loss of mission objectives and contribute to increased potential loss of crew. Nutritional value must be met with the food system. Lunar missions may require logistics to be delivered with each crewed mission, reducing delivery mass capability across other areas."

Current state of the art

"The ISS is regularly resupplied with a wide variety of shelf stable foods for the crew to choose from with a minimum of 18 months shelf life. Ambient temperature storage limits shelf life. No cold stowage capability is currently available. Ambient pressure maintains packing integrity against oxygen, humidity, and microbes. There have been food storage and nutrition studies conducted on the ISS. There have also been studies and small scale demonstrations on the ISS for crop plant production and propagation, such as the Vegetable Production System (VEGGIE) and the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), but technology development is needed to scale up crop plant production and agriculture for long-duration missions."

Performance target

  • Moon/Mars: "Food system to provide nutritional shelf life, variety, safety, and acceptability for sustained Moon and Mars mission durations and life support closure levels."
  • Mars: "In addition, increased shelf life compared to the lunar performance target."

Child gaps

  • 0305-01: Food and nutrition impact modeling for crew health and performance
  • 0305-02: Safe, acceptable, efficient, and nutritious food system
  • 0305-03: Earth-independent food intake tracking
  • 0305-04: Food preservation and storage for long-duration deep space missions
  • 0305-05: Food production for long-duration deep space missions

Traceability

  • Use cases and functions: UC-U-725 L -- FN-U-602 L; UC-H-104 M -- FN-X-104 M; UC-H-105 M -- FN-X-106 M; UC-X-105 M -- FN-X-101 M; UC-X-106 M -- FN-X-102 M
  • Definition tasks: Mars: Maximum Total Crew Mission Duration; ECLSS Strategy (In Space); Food Refrigeration and Growth

Segments and sub-architectures

Priority

Priority bin 2, overall prioritization rating 9 of 57. The rating is "the gap's location in the prioritized list of gaps", so 1 is the highest priority, and bins group gaps of similar priority, bin 1 highest. Criticality, urgency, breadth and depth set the order; cost is not considered (ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199; method on the gaps index).

Moon Base relevance

Not established by the sources so far. The Users Guide does not name #0305 among its near-term Moon Base challenges (Technology and knowledge challenges). Its Phase 1 habitation capability targets mention "nutrition" (Users Guide, p. 9; see Phase 1 functional gaps), but it does not cite this gap there.

Sources

Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0305 · ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199, 214 · Users Guide, p. 9