One of the challenges of manned space missions is the cost and that includes the necessity to have supplies on-hand that allow astronauts to survive. Postdoctoral scholar Amor Menezes of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says another challenge is the shelf-life of medical supplies.

"Pharmaceuticals expire quicker in space than they do on Earth. So if an astronaut has a medical emergency in space and the pharmaceuticals or the medication that is required is already expired, is no longer useful, you would have to ship medical supplies, which is tremendously costly, right? Plus, you don’t know if it’s going to reach in time, which means that the astronaut’s life is in danger."

Menezes has been analyzing alternative methods of producing supplies such as food and pharmaceuticals that are less costly to transport through long space missions.

"And so the ability to manufacture pharmaceuticals in real time is very important and it cuts cost, the cost is basically the life and timeliness."