About SATED Space
Culinary agency and creative joy in space
SATED Space's patent-protected inventions are uniquely foundational to safely cooking and consuming fresh-cooked meals in zero and low-gravity, closed environments.
Our Mission: To give space crews the culinary agency to target their own nutrition, and the creative joy of making and sharing these fresh-cooked meals, so they feel the comfort of home anywhere in the Universe.
In carrying out this mission, we aim to:
Enhance the public's sustained interest and ability to emotionally connect with crews during exploration.
Share the lessons and technologies of SATED to inspire STEM initiatives.
Represent the scrappy joy and contribution of America's garage inventors.
Creating culinary freedom
Starting with the SATED Space Oven, our cooking innovations safely and effectively integrate more ingredient preparation, cooking, dining, and cleanup functions into the space kitchen environment. However, our flagship SATED cooking appliance remains the creative core of tomorrow’s space galley.
Origin story
SATED Space’s journey sparked from a chance discovery of the unknown.
SATED began in early 2020 with a discovery: efficiently superheating lunar regolith in 1/6 gravity was a messy, dangerous, and unsolved problem. The pursuit evolved into proving that water could be boiled in zero gravity by generating artificial gravity within the vessel—an unpatented breakthrough that opened the door to a series of unexpected discoveries during the isolation of the pandemic.
From mastering the physics of boiling to experimenting with early cooking tests, SATED’s first platform produced the world’s first cylindrical pancake—and later, a “pineapple inside-out cake.” By 2021, the goal had crystallized: design a safe and functional cooking appliance. Drawing inspiration from familiar kitchen tools, the first prototype was crafted from stainless steel and featured aerospace-grade engineering.
Development accelerated with successive generations of SATED systems, culminating in formal parabolic flight testing and multiple NASA Deep Space Food Challenge awards. Today, SATED Space continues to advance its patented components for the space kitchen, with partnerships extending to culinary innovators and plans for flight testing aboard orbital platforms. The long-term mission: enable real cooking for astronauts on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
CEO and Founder, Jim Sears
“The best journeys never end, and SATED is one of those journeys. Our destination is the finest food, the finest machines, the finest culinary experience, the finest companions to share our journey with, and the continuing journey of SATED beyond us. There's no end to that journey in my life, and it's a delicious ride.”
—Jim Sears
The creative force behind SATED Space, Jim Sears, is a globally recognized innovator in the field of advanced space technology and human-factors engineering. Based in Boulder, CO, the visionary aerospace engineer transformed his garage into a world-class R&D lab, from which he could professionally and resourcefully explore the new frontiers of technological discovery.
Jim's early career as a research engineer-diver, trained by Navy SEALs, laid the foundation for his expertise in developing novel human engineering and sensor solutions for harsh environments. He designed critical non-magnetic sensing equipment (handheld sonars, breathing rate and thermocline wave sensors, diver communication tools), focusing on tools that prioritize ease of use, simplicity, and reliability. Jim then transitioned to an aerospace hardware systems engineer and spent decades as a Boulder technology innovator and entrepreneurial ecosystem leader. His scientific background emphasizes the importance of developing technology from physical fundamentals, and from his own beliefs, technology that serves human purposes. His critical eye on design and function stems from a core belief that technology should serve humans, not the other way around.
An independent thinker, Jim's philosophy is to make SATED's solutions as familiar and comforting as our current daily rituals of preparing and consuming food. Jim's unique blend of technical fluency and talents in physical prototyping and experimentation enables him to understand technologies at a fundamental level. His insatiable curiosity to understand the "why" gives Jim rare inside views and the intellectual courage from which new insights and inventions are frequently discovered and allowed to exist.
Jim strives for humility and aims to learn from everyone, yet provides bold and courageous leadership when it's needed most. His ever-young beginner's mindset does not block learning with preconceptions. From the solidity of this foundation, he champions SATED technologies fearlessly and our unstoppable transition to adopting fresh-cooked food in space as part of the solution in our rapidly unfolding exploration, commercialization, and colonization of space.
Become a part of humanity’s next great adventure.
Join us in revolutionizing life in space – together, we can create a future where comfort, innovation, and fine cuisine fuel exploration.
