Larissa has successfully defended her thesis “Cooking in Space”. Congratulations, Dr. Zhou!

Here is the abstract from her thesis. If you are curious, you can also check out this 5-min video about her work that Harvard made last year.

The question of how to feed humans in space has persisted since the beginning of space exploration. Tubes of food paste, dehydrated meals, freeze-dried packets, powdered drink pouches: space food has always needed to be compact, lightweight, and pre-cooked. But humans cannot thrive on rehydrated meals alone, and the current space food system is insufficient for the longer duration missions to the moon and Mars that will launch in the coming decades. The challenges to developing food system solutions that meet the demands of future missions are immense.

 
This dissertation navigates the multifaceted realm of space food science, from establishing the importance of pleasure in space dining to creating practical solutions for space cuisine. Larissa adopts a system engineering approach to illuminate food needs by mission type, identify challenges, and propose potential solutions, thereby building a technology development roadmap to meet the space food demands of the future. She then delves into the design of a space galley as part of the larger SIRONA project, a greenhouse design for a two-year mission on a Mars outpost. Finally, she discusses the development of a prototype pot, H0TP0T, designed to address the challenges of cooking in a liquid medium in microgravity. Through two parabolic microgravity flights, Larissa proves the concept’s feasibility.