Science fiction tends to present spacefood as eitherflavorless, prefabricatedcubes or platesof luscious Earthfoodthat magically appear out ofhigh-techreplicators.
The US space agency's (Nasa) Near Earth Object programme reports on its website that it has recorded 1068 known "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids", however there are thousands more estimated to be present in space.
The experiment will take nearly a week, and researchers will need three to four weeks to analyze the results, which will reveal whether organic chemicals are present, the space agency said.