UMass Researchers Helping NASA Predict Nutritional Value Of Space Food

UMass researchers are helping NASA predict how fast its astronauts' food will lose nutritional value. This could be especially important on long space flights, including any future trips to Mars.

When astronauts go on long missions, their food packets may stay uneaten for months.

UMass food scientist Timothy Goulette said it's been hard for NASA to predict which vitamins degrade in those foods, and how quickly. That information determines when to restock a space station or tell astronauts to take more vitamin pills.

So Goulette's team developed a mathematical model to help make those calls. They focused on a few dishes that often go up in space.

"For example, your beef brisket product, which has more fat — it's just different in a chemical sense than, let's say, brown rice," he said. "The vitamin B content's going to drop much faster."

Goullette said the new technique — developed with a $1 million grant from NASA — is more efficient, and therefore cheaper, than current methods.

And hopefully, he said, it will lead to more actual food on board, and fewer supplements, which helps psychologically on long space missions.