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What do astronauts eat?

Designing a diet to keep astronauts healthy

What are the nutritional challenges, and the highs and lows of food in space? As NASA looks at creating a lunar habitat, and even launching a mission to Mars, how can the right food be prepared and transported to keep astronauts both healthy, and happy? Marie Keyworth speaks to veteran astronaut Nicole Stott, and NASA’s top nutrition expert Scott Smith, who leads the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. Marie finds out what it’s really like to eat in zero gravity, and how nutrition is being used to counteract the extreme health impacts of spaceflight on the human body. Studying astronaut diets in space might even help our understanding of nutrition here on earth.

Presented by Marie Keyworth.
Produced by Sarah Treanor.

(Image: astronaut in space holding a burger. Credit: Getty / Â鶹ÊÓƵAV)

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 23 Oct 2022 07:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Thu 20 Oct 2022 03:32GMT
  • Thu 20 Oct 2022 04:32GMT
  • Thu 20 Oct 2022 10:32GMT
  • Thu 20 Oct 2022 21:32GMT
  • Thu 20 Oct 2022 22:32GMT
  • Sun 23 Oct 2022 07:32GMT

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