“Aquaculture in space” by Ben Stevenson

The Guardian reported yesterday on 'The Lunar Hatch' project, which is aiming to send fertilised sea bass eggs into space, so they can farm fish for astronauts.

Lunar Hatch's ultimate aim is to create a “closed-loop food chain” on the moon, using a series of compartments. The first tanks will be filled with water from ice found at the bottom of craters at the moon's poles. The wastewater produced by fish in these tanks will be used to produce micro-algae that can then be used to feed filtering organisms, including bivalves, or zooplankton would collect some of the waste.

The faeces from the sea bass in the first tank would, meanwhile, be treated by shrimps and worms that would in turn be food for the fish.

“The aim of Lunar Hatch is to have no waste,” Przybyla [the researcher leading the project] says. “Everything is recycled through an aquaculture [...]

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First published:
April 29th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wzCGbdCQsNQHjL8MY/aquaculture-in-space

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.