Long before humans reached orbit, insects had already proven they could handle spaceflight. Fruit flies travelled aboard a V-2 rocket in 1947, becoming the first animals to reach space and survive the journey. Since then, countless creepy crawlies have followed, from bumblebees and houseflies to ants and stick insects, helping scientists understand how living organisms cope with the extreme environment beyond Earth's atmosphere.
Now, as space agencies plan missions to the Moon and Mars that could last months or even years, researchers are exploring if these tiny travellers with a different question in mind, could insects become a reliable food source for astronauts on long duration missions? The European Space Agency has assembled a team of food, biology and space experts to explore this possibility, and their findings suggest insects might be surprisingly well suited to the task.
The common fruit fly, has been used to study the effects of spaceflight on living organisms.
I have to confess though, as someone who's tried both ants and even a witchetty grub, I wasn't particularly impressed with either. But personal preferences aside, the scientific case for edible insects in space is compelling. These small creatures are extraordinarily efficient at converting materials humans cannot eat into nutritious food. They're light, adaptable, and packed with protein, fatty acids, iron, zinc and B vitamins, often matching or exceeding the nutritional values of meat, fish and legumes.
Billions of people around the world already consume insects regularly. Over 2000 species appear in human diets across the planet, prepared in ways that make crickets taste like nuts with a smoky aftertaste, mealworms resemble bacon, and ants carry a lemony tang. Cricket flour has even made it to the International Space Station, when ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti packed a blueberry cereal bar containing the ingredient for her 2022 mission.
The key advantage for space applications lies in how well insects cope with microgravity. According to Åsa Berggren, Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and lead author of a recent study, insects demonstrate a remarkable ability to withstand physical stresses. Fruit flies have completed their entire life cycle in microgravity, from fertilisation through to adults capable of producing offspring. Ants showed impressive abilities to cling to surfaces, while other species struggled more with movement and reproduction.
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti prepares lunch on the ISS iincluding the use of cricket flour (Credit : ESA)
The European Food Safety Authority authorised house crickets and yellow mealworms for human consumption in 2023, making them legally available across Europe. However, significant knowledge gaps remain before insects can become a standard part of space cuisine. Much of the existing research dates from between 1960 and 2000, and many experiments lasted only minutes or days, too brief to observe complete life cycles.
Despite these promising developments, future research must address fundamental questions about multi generational insect breeding in space, housing systems for microgravity environments and methods to process insects into palatable forms that astronauts will actually want to eat repeatedly over months or years. There's also the psychological dimension, convincing crew members to embrace insects as food rather than viewing them as pests invading their spacecraft. Yet as we prepare for increasingly ambitious journeys into deep space, the humble insect may prove to be an unexpectedly valuable companion.
Source : Insects on the space menu
