As early as 2021 , NASA is hoping to send four people on a missionary work around the Moon aboard their Orion spacecraft , the first manned mission for the fresh vehicle , calledExploration Mission 2 .

But this military mission , which will last between 10 and 14 day , presents some interesting challenge . Namely , space inside the vehicle will be improbably modified , and with no home faculty , the team will have to pack as lightly as possible .

One particular job this stimulate is intellectual nourishment . On the relatively roomy International Space Station ( ISS ) , spaceman have a rudimentary kitchen and more than 200 detail of nutrient to choose from . But in Orion , these mod - cons will not be available .

So NASA ’s Advanced Food Technology squad at the Johnson Space Center has been forge on place solid food bar , each packing 700 to 900 calorie , which the astronaut will be capable to eat for breakfast during the mission . The bar will be passing dense , reduce the amount of space needed to store it on the mission .

“ When you have 700 to 900 calories of something , it ’s going to have some mass regardless of what cast it ’s in , so we ’ve taken a looking at at how to get some aggregative saving by come down how we ’re package and stowing what the crowd would eat for breakfast for early Orion escape with gang , ” said Jessica Vos , surrogate health and aesculapian technical assurance for Orion , in astatement .

“ When you call back about multi - week missions in Orion , having just one software program for breakfast item for crew will help oneself us set the space we postulate to lay in them . ”

The bars come in a variety of flavors , including orange cranberry and barbecue nut , to give the astronauts something different to reckon forrad to ( or perhaps fear ) each twenty-four hour period .

Of course , NASA is hoping to finally send man to Mars in the 2030s , which will present a whole novel host of challenges . The agency is already working on agency for spaceman to uprise their own intellectual nourishment during the journeying of eight   calendar month or so each style . In fact , some vegetable have already been grow and consume on the ISS .

For the most part , cosmonaut food on the ISS today is a far rallying cry from the freeze - dried servings that were once on crack . It seems , though , that as we go deeper into space , we might take to re - learn some of those quondam lessons .