22 Jun 2021
Puratos represented the SpaceBakery Consortium during The Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) 2021 in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, from 14 – 18 June 2021. We are honoured to receive the Gold Prize and be recognised so highly by the global space community.
The conference, co-organised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and ROSCOSMOS, brought together leaders and decision-makers within the science and human exploration community to discuss recent results, current challenges and innovative solutions. It offered opportunities to learn about space exploration investment benefits, and discuss how those benefits can be further increased through thoughtful planning and cooperation.
Participation in this conference enabled us to get together with the industry-leading experts from different countries who want to study and explore space. It also allowed us to showcase our "Mission to Mars" programme as a project that prioritises sustainability, health and the efficient use of natural resources, providing solutions that will be highly relevant to space technology tomorrow and on Earth today.
Puratos Research Manager Agronomy, Lucie Beckers, represented Puratos and the SpaceBakery Consortium during the conference. During one of the Technical sessions under the category “Challenges of Life Support/Medical Support for Human Missions, she presented the SpaceBakery project.
We are also immensely proud to have been recognised for the work and efforts of the Consortium, as we receive the Gold prize for our project among the other 250 cases presented.
What is SpaceBakery?
To bring together various knowledge domains and expertise, the SpaceBakery Consortium has been created with several Belgian partners. Led by Puratos, Urban Crop Solutions, Magics Instruments, SCK•CEN, Ghent University, University of Hasselt, and Flanders Food are all working cooperatively on the SpaceBakery project. SpaceBakery is a closed ecological plant cultivation system and bakery that will aid the long-term survival of settlers on Mars in addition to being applicable for modern agriculture on Earth.
Why is this research project important?
The need to reduce our global environmental footprint is urgent and hard to ignore. At Puratos, we took off the ambitious “Mission to Mars” Programme, in which we imagine future settlers on Mars having access to healthy, nutritious bakery products. We believe that our discoveries during this experiment will lead to amazing, innovative applications and help us continue providing healthy, nutritious and tasty foods for life on Earth in the future.
At Puratos, we truly believe that successful collaborations can fuel the growth of our “Mission to Mars” Programme and bring extraordinary benefits to Earth.
