NASA to develop 700-calorie breakfast bars for astronauts

NASA has been working on developing breakfast bars that will replace typical 700- to 800-calorie meal that an astronaut requires.

NASA to develop 700-calorie breakfast bars for astronauts

Washington: NASA has been working on developing breakfast bars that will replace typical 700- to 800-calorie meal that an astronaut requires.

The average crewmember aboard the International Space Station eats 3,000 calories a day, a level needed to support two hours of daily exercise required for bone and cardiovascular health in microgravity , Discovery News reported.

With cargo ships regularly making supply runs to the station, keeping the pantry stocked with food is not a problem. But NASA is laying the groundwork for missions that will take astronauts far beyond the station's 260-mile high orbit, making food deliveries few and far between.

Space aboard cargo ships also will be severely limited, prompting scientists to come up with ways to reduce the mass of food. For now, the focus is on breakfast, which now might entail six separate packages of foods, such as eggs, sausage, bread and drinks.

Maya Cooper, with NASA contractor Wyle Laboratories at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that this takes up a lot of space and lot of trash gets collected, so if just one meal replacement bar could be made available, which would be dense, but it would save a ton in terms of mass and packaging volume.

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