{"id":55944,"date":"2017-02-23T16:29:14","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T02:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=55944"},"modified":"2020-01-13T14:17:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T00:17:56","slug":"how-bright-is-the-future-of-space-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2017\/02\/23\/how-bright-is-the-future-of-space-food\/","title":{"rendered":"How bright is the future of space food?"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bp2Hz1fUtE0?showinfo=0\" title=\"Youtube video player\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_55947\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55947\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-engineering-borsuk-a.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"277\" class=\"size-full wp-image-55947\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-engineering-borsuk-a.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-engineering-borsuk-a-188x260.jpg 188w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55947\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aleca Borsuk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Research at the <a href=\"http:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/\">University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M&#257;noa<\/a> could play a major role in <abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Administration\">NASA<\/abbr>&#8217;s goal to travel to Mars in the 2030s, including what the astronauts could eat during that historic mission.<\/p>\n<p>A trip to Mars and back is estimated to take about two and half years, and ideally, their diet would be healthy while requiring minimal effort and energy. <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.me.hawaii.edu\/\">mechanical engineering<\/a> student <strong>Aleca Borsuk<\/strong> may have the solution.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I picked a really hearty, heat tolerant, drought tolerant species of edible vegetable, and that is amaranth. It&#8217;s an ancient grain,&rdquo; said Borsuk, who determined that she could significantly increase the edible parts, which is basically the entire plant, by changing the lighting. &ldquo;If you move the lights and have some of them overhead and some of them within the plant leaves, it can actually stimulate them to grow faster and larger.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>This is without adding more lights and by using energy efficient <abbr title=\"light emitting diode\">LED<\/abbr>s. Thanks to Borsuk&#8217;s work with lighting, plants could play an important role in the future of space travel.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This plant would do the same thing that it does here on Earth, which is regenerate oxygen in the atmosphere,&rdquo; said Borsuk. &ldquo;It also can provide nutrition for the astronauts and if you can imagine being away from Earth for many years, you know tending something that&#8217;s green would have a psychological boost as well.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>A 2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/offices\/studentaffairs\/scholarships\/raps-overview.php\"><abbr>UH<\/abbr> Presidential Scholar<\/a>, Borsuk presented her research at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu\/\"><span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Space Grant Consortium<\/a> Spring 2016 Fellowship and Traineeship Symposium and at the 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ashs.org\/\">American Society for Horticultural Science Conference<\/a> in Florida. She is mentored by <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa <a href=\"http:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/ctahr\/tpss\/\">Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences<\/a> Associate Professor <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctahr.hawaii.edu\/site\/Bio.aspx?ID=KOBAYKEN\">Kent Kobayashi<\/a><\/strong>, who is also an American Society for Horticultural Science Fellow.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Related <abbr>UH<\/abbr> News story<\/strong>: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2013\/07\/19\/scholarship-program-aims-to-keep-hawaiis-best\/\">Scholarship program aims to keep <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>&#8217;s best<\/a><\/em>, July 19, 2013<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>More <abbr>UH<\/abbr> Mars research<\/h2>\n<p><abbr>UH<\/abbr> is not only researching what astronauts could eat during a trip to Mars, researchers are also studying crew cohesion. <\/p>\n<p>Since 2013, <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/hi-seas.org\/\"><span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Space Exploration Analog and Simulation<\/a>, or <abbr title=\"Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation\">HI-SEAS<\/abbr>, has been researching how teams of astronauts will perform together on long-duration space exploration missions. Crew members in the <abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Administration\">NASA<\/abbr> funded project have spent up to a year isolated in a dome located in a remote, Mars-like area of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Island.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/tag\/hi-seas\/\">Read more about the <abbr>HI-SEAS<\/abbr> program.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa student Aleca Borsuk&#8217;s work with ancient grains may help feed future missions to Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":56568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,12],"tags":[212,182,442,174,432,9,56],"class_list":["post-55944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-video","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-engineering","tag-hi-seas","tag-space","tag-tropical-plant-and-soil-sciences","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/manoa-engineering-plants-in-space-f.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55944"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78879,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55944\/revisions\/78879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}