Photo: NASA/Markowitz/Stafford

Maya Cooper is grinding wheat berries to make flour, which she will then use to make bread and pasta. But Cooper, 36, is not an ambitious home cook preparing brunch for friends. Instead, she's ensconced in a pristine NASA food laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, surrounded by freeze-drying machines and vacuum-packing equipment. Cooper's mission: to figure out what to feed astronauts during their first trip to Mars, tentatively scheduled for the 2030s.
            
From a cuisine standpoint, a mission to the red planet—estimated to take three years, much longer than the typical one- or two-week trip to the moon—poses unique challenges. Most of the prepackaged foods on which astronauts have long relied can spoil in half that time. Cooper, who studied chemical engineering at Texas A&M University, helped develop organic snacks for Frito-Lay before becoming a contractor for NASA. There, she researches the costs, benefits and risks of extraterrestrial farms on which astronauts may someday grow food during extended exploratory missions.