Have you ever copied your grandmother’s recipe and felt that it didn’t quite taste like hers? Similarly, researchers aimed to ferment miso onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and found that it tasted quite different to the traditional miso made on Earth. Like trying to figure out where your recipe differs from your grandma’s, researchers found that miso essentially fermented in space produced a nuttier, more roasted flavor compared to miso on Earth.
Miso is a Japanese condiment that consists of fermented soybeans and salt. It has many uses in Japanese culinary traditions and served a two-fold purpose to scientists. Firstly, scientists wanted to expand the food options available to astronauts aboard the ISS, and secondly, scientists wanted to understand if the process of fermentation was possible in space.
Eager to study the difference between Earth-made miso and space-made miso, researchers created three containers of the soybean-salt mix. Two of these containers were on Earth but at different locations with one in Cambridge, MA, in the U.S. and the other in Copenhagen, Denmark. The third batch was sent to space in 2020 where it fermented onboard the ISS for 30 days before returning to Earth as miso. To keep track of each batch, environmental sensing was implemented, and it tracked several factors including temperature, humidity, pressure and radiation levels.
Once the space miso returned to Earth, scientists immediately got to analyzing it. They focused on the miso’s microbial communities, flavor compounds, and sensory properties. The study’s co-authors, Maggie Coblentz, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Dr. Joshua Evans, of the Technical University of Denmark shared that while it is possible for fermentation to occur in space, the results produced can be different than what they would typically be on Earth. Dr. Evans theorized that “there are some features of the space environment in low earth orbit— in particular microgravity and increased radiation — that could have impacts on how microbes grow and metabolize and thus how fermentation works.”
Following this study, Dr. Coblentz states some of the implications of this study. “While the ISS is often seen as a sterile environment, our research shows that microbes and non-human life have agency in space, raising significant bioethical questions about removing plants and microbes from their home planet and introducing them to extraterrestrial environments,” shares Coblentz.
Overall, researchers find that this expands the possibilities onboard the ISS and births further research into what can be done in space.
