Biomanufacturing could make manned space missions a lot more practical. These were the findings of a new study led by Amor Menezes of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The process involves using microbes, singled-celled organisms that can produce supplies such as fuel and food from the available resources on extraterrestrial locations such as Mars.

"The biological technology, it's basically the same process, but instead of using a fuel manufacturing plant, we would actually take a bioreactor with us and have microbes in that bioreactor, and they would be producing the methane and the oxygen that would be required. So it's a simple substitution of a technology that's already there that's non-biological with a technology that is biological."

Menezes says that the advantage of using biological technologies is that it can cut costs by significantly reducing mass onboard long flights to Mars.

"Depending on certain scenarios as envisioned by NASA, so we follow the same scenarios, you can actually get significant mass savings."