The First Meat Made Off Earth

On September 26, 2019, the Israeli company Aleph Farms and the Russian firm 3D Bioprinting Solutions ran a joint experiment on the Russian segment of the International Space Station, using a bioprinter to assemble small-scale muscle tissue under microgravity. The tissue mimicked the natural process a cow's body uses to regenerate muscle, done here without an animal, a farm, or gravity. Aleph Farms, which had closed a $12 million funding round four months earlier, framed the test as evidence that meat could someday be grown wherever people are, from a space station to a drought-stricken city. It was not dinner. It was a proof of concept, a few grams of tissue meant to show the process still works when none of the usual inputs, land, herd, or even gravity, are available.