'Fake Steak': SpaceX Set to Conduct Experiment of Artificial Meat; Sends 4-Member Private Crew to ISS for the Tests

SpaceX, the company of Tech billionaire Elon Musk, is set to experiment this week that, according to space reports, could change the way many think about meat.

As specified in a Daily Star report, Musk will be using his space firm to send a private crew to the International Space Station or ISS this week, where tests employing Israeli lab-grown meat will take place.

Specifically, an all-private crew will be launched onto the ISS, where the tests with the Aleph Farms of Israel will be carried out to develop so-called "fake steaks."

The meat-growing firm is currently working on artificial substitutes to make products typically made from cows. A spokesman explained, "prolonged exploration in space," like getting to the Red planet, is limited by the ability to offer quality nutrition to astronauts.

Artificial Substitutes

Aleph Farms is developing a technological platform for cultivating beef steaks in a process that's consuming a substantially smaller portion of the resources needed to raise a whole animal for meat.

Understanding such a process is working in low gravity, the developers explained, will help develop an entire production process of meat production for long-term space missions and create an efficient production process that reduces the environmental footprint on this planet.

The mission has been dubbed "Axiom Mission 1," which is described on the Axiom Space website, and will take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida middle of this week.

The four-member crew on the 10-day mission comprises former astronauts of NASA, Michael Lopez-Alegria, real estate millionaire Larry Connor, businessman Mark Pathy, and Israeli philanthropist and former Israel Defense Force fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe.

The latter mentioned will have the monumental task of transporting the micro lab of the farm, and plugging it into ISS power and monitoring systems.

Procedures Leading to Growth and Mutations of Cells

According to Dr. Zvika Tamari of Aleph Farm, their experiment will use a particular microfluidic device. Such a device will allow cow cells to grow and mature into "cells that build muscle tissue, the cultivated state, under microgravity conditions."

Tamari also said that this constitutes a different environment for these processes to take place. This means that much work is needed to establish the conditions and procedures that can guarantee their successful implementation.

Establishing such procedures that can lead to successful growth and mutation of cells constitutes the most substantial of his work in preparation for the Rakia Mission, he said.

'Steak for Space'

A related Daily Express report specified that after the Axiom Mission 1, spending eight days onboard the ISS, the astronauts are set to touch down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Then, Stibbe will deliver the microfluidic device to the researchers of Aleph Farms, who will transport the cultured cells to their laboratory based in Israel for evaluation and comparison with a control experiment undertaken back on this planet.

In parallel with the mission to take place next week, Aleph Farms has its eyes as well, on its next space challenge, and that is to develop a closed-loop system that can develop cultivated meat to feed astronauts on a three-year-long mission, what Tamary has called "Steak for Space."

The company said they envisage astronauts "being able to configure" the nutritional structure of these artificial steaks, and even enrich them with added vitamins and minerals.

A related report about the artificial meat for testing in space is shown on What's News - Space & Science's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Lab-Grown Meat in Science Times.