Fully automated laboratory heads into orbit to test food production in space

Cranfield University spin-out company Frontier Space has sent a fully automated laboratory into orbit as part of a European Space Agency project to assess the viability of creating lab-grown food in microgravity.

The laboratory contains three payloads and was launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 21 April 2025, housed inside a re-entry capsule provided by German startup ATMOS Space Cargo.

Frontier Space focuses on solutions for industrializing biotechnology in space. It is the creator of SpaceLab, a scalable, modular, autonomous lab-in-a-box designed to industrialize in-orbit manufacturing of high-value bioproducts. This particular mission doesn’t involve the full SpaceLab, but instead uses what Frontier CEO Aqeel Shamsul describes as “an EGGS (Early Gen micro-Gravity Service) payload, which is a small device customized for this specific mission.”

Shamsul says that this mission “represents a significant opportunity to mature Frontier Space’s technology” and will test and evaluate parts of Frontier’s SpaceLab such as its microfluidics chips and onboard imaging system.

Understanding how to grow vital supplies in space

One of the three payloads on this mission is from Imperial College London, and involves transporting biological specimens into orbit before returning them to Earth for analysis.

Researchers at Imperial College have already used a bioreactor on Earth to genetically engineer food from yeast in a process they call “precision fermentation,” but this experiment will help them to understand whether that process works in space, and what challenges they may have to overcome. If successful, this could be one of the building blocks that give astronauts the ability to manufacture the consumables they need rather than having them sent from Earth.

Food, pharmaceuticals, fuel and bioplastics are heavy and expensive to launch into space—food alone is estimated to cost as much as £20,000 per person, per day for astronauts on the International Space Station. Manufacturing these products in microgravity would solve one of the fundamental problems that needs to be addressed before long-distance, crewed space missions or off-world manufacturing facilities can become a reality.

“We dream about a future where humanity heads off into the dark expanses of space. But carrying enough to feed ourselves on the journey and at our destination would be unimaginable in cost and weight,” said Dr. Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro from Imperial College’s Department of Bioengineering. “If just a handful of cultivated cells could provide all our food, pharmaceuticals, fuels and bioplastics using freely available resources, that would bring the future closer.”

Frontier Space spun out of Cranfield University in 2021, and David Cullen, Professor of Astrobiology and Space Biotechnology at Cranfield University, sees its success as a validation of the work being done at the university. “It’s rewarding to see technology developed under Cranfield’s BAMMsat program transition to commercialization, with significant potential across many applications.”

Professor Cullen, who also serves as Frontier Space’s Science and Technology Advisor, continued, “It’s fantastic that Frontier Space is helping drive the rapid market growth in using space environments to develop advanced bioscience, biotechnological, and pharmaceutical knowledge and products.”