Mission Space Food: Sugar-Growing Bacteria Go Into Orbit, NASA Ames Reveals

MATT DAMON’S character in The Martian has to grow potatoes in his own faeces to survive on Mars. But there may be more appealing ways to make food in space, like using bacteria to make chemicals we can eat, such as sugar.

“The first pilgrims who came to the Americas didn’t bring all their food for the rest of their lives,” says Lynn Rothschild of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “You need to live off the land.”