The development of food rations for manned mission to the moon began in Russia

Tubes with Soviet space food

Russia is in full swing preparing for the flight to the moon on the future manned ship "Federation". Since January 2018, the development of a menu for the crew of the ship began in the Research Institute of Food and Concentrate Industry and Special Food Technology (a branch of the Federal Research Center for Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety), the newspaper Izvestia writes.

The institute explained that the development of diets began on the instructions of the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia. Obviously, the state-owned companies are optimistic about the chances of the Russian lunar program.

The basis of the food ration will be the ration of the crew of the Soyuz spacecraft delivering astronauts to the International Space Station. “It will be supplemented with freeze-drying products. The “Union” diet is designed for three days of flight, and the “Federation” will have a nine-day supply of food, ”said the research institute. In addition, there is a special stove on the ISS for heating dishes, and there will not be such a stove on the Federation because of the limited space. Accordingly, it is unlikely that warmed canned food will be included in the diet.

The menu of astronauts on the Soyuz is calculated based on the duration of the flight to the ISS and return to Earth - these are three days. Here, the food package includes canned food, bread, fruit sticks, cookies and a bag of juice. In the menu for flying to the moon liquid juices will not be. Juices, soups and second courses will replace freeze-dried products - dehydrated food in the form of small pieces or a powdery mixture, placed in a special plastic packaging.

With this method of cooking the finished products are frozen, and then sharply dried in a vacuum. Thus, the ice immediately goes into the vapor state, without going into the liquid. Food becomes much lighter in weight without losing nutrients. This technology used to be used for American astronauts, and now they are used in Russia. To get the finished dish, you need to make a small hole in the package, pour hot water into it and wait for the preparation.

In addition, it is planned to include canned fish, meat, vegetable snacks, fruit desserts in the lunar diet.

Daily ration is designed for 2700−3000 calories, as on the ISS. By the way, the Russian cosmonauts on the ISS are now tasting before flight and choosing from more than 300 dishes what they want to eat at the station. During the tasting, the cosmonaut scores each dish on a 9-point scale. For example, here are poultry dishes:

• chicken meat in white sauce
• chicken pate,
• chicken meat with prunes,
• omelet with chicken meat,
• chicken rice
• fajita chicken,
• chicken with egg
• chicken noodle soup,
• and etc.

All dishes that have been rated below 6 points are excluded from the diet.

In the tubes now there are only mustard and condiments such as ketchup, there is still canned food. All the rest is sublimated food in bags, which will be the same for the crew of the Federation. On the ISS, a 16-day diet, that is, dishes are repeated only after 16 days.



Russian cosmonauts often exchange food with their American counterparts, for a change. It is said that Americans have a lot of sweet foods - yogurt, chocolate pudding, fruit dessert, buns, sweets. And the Russians have a better menu: meat with potatoes, soup, cosmohleb, which does not crumble. And the American astronauts really liked the soup from the Russian menu - they don’t have that.

Although some doctors believe that small doses of brandy could play the role of an adaptogen, but so far, the ISS is a dry law.

The development of food rations for the flight to the moon takes into account the effects on cosmonauts of cosmic radiation that could be harmful to health. Therefore, products with radioprotective properties are added to the diet, that is, products with a high content of calcium, potassium and iodine, pectins, vitamins P, B, and C. Russia and the United States recently agreed to set up a joint working group that will work out international near-moon station Deep Space Gateway. Perhaps these developments will also be useful in developing the diet of Russian astronauts, even if they fly to the moon separately from the Americans.

The menu is being developed in conjunction with the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences - the leading scientific institution of Russia in the field of space medicine. This institute, together with the NASA Human Research Program unit, is involved in the development of space radiation protection requirements at Deep Space Gateway.

According to the plans of RSC Energia, the first manned flight of the Federation to the moon’s orbit is to take place at the end of 2027. Two years ago, Roskosmos published an approximate flight pattern .

According to the plan, for the implementation of the flight will be developed:

• RN Angara-A5
• Space Federation
• Moon ship
• KVTK (Oxygen-hydrogen accelerating unit of a heavy class)

The approximate flight pattern is:

1. The conclusion of the "Federation" weighing 16.5 tons on the low orbit of the Earth.
2. The docking of the "Federation" with the KVTK, flight to the moon's orbit.
3. Launch of the lunar spacecraft into Earth orbit.
4. The docking of the lunar spacecraft with the KVTK, the flight to the moon's orbit.
5. The docking of the "Federation" with the moon ship.
6. Landing on the moon, research.
7. Take off from the moon.
8. Undocking of the lunar ship, the flight of the "Federation" to the Earth, the entrance to the atmosphere at the second cosmic velocity.

Recall that initially at the beginning of the 2000s, RSC Energia planned to build a permanent base on the Moon by 2015 , and by 2020 to begin production on the helium-3 satellite. According to the plan, in 2015, the reusable ship Clipper was to be put into operation, with the help of which they wanted to start flying to the moon. The intermediate target for the Russian ship was to become the ISS, which, in the opinion of the head of the rocket and space corporation, should have turned into an international spaceport by this point. In addition to the manned Clipper, they wanted to use the Parom inter-orbital tugboat in the project. However, on June 1, 2006, all work on the Clipper manned spacecraft was completely stopped even before the end of the closed competition of the Federal Space Agency for the development of the ship design.