The European Space Agency (ESA) is assessing the viability of growing lab-grown food in orbit and on other planets.

ESA is conducting the research in an attempt to reduce the financial burden of feeding an astronaut, which currently costs up to £20,000 per day.

The experts say that the experiment is a first step to developing a pilot food production plant on the International Space Station (ISS) in two years from now.

Dr. Aqeel Shamsul - the CEO and founder of Frontier Space, the company developing the concept with boffins at Imperial College London - said that lab-grown food is imperative if NASA's ambition to make humans a multi-planetary species is to be achieved.

He told BBC News: "Our dream is to have factories in orbit and on the Moon.

"We need to build manufacturing facilities off world if we are to provide the infrastructure to enable humans to live and work in space."