NASA announced the winners of the Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, with first-place prize of $300,000 going to Chinyere Ukeje of Philadelphia for the Adaptive Nourishment Infrastructure food system concept.
The competition challenged teams to explore innovative solutions for integrated space food systems capable of providing safe, nutritious meals to astronauts living and working in space. After judging 113 submissions from 33 countries and 28 U.S. states, the agency selected five winning teams, awarding a combined $650,000.
Current astronaut meals are almost entirely cooked, packaged, and sent from Earth to the International Space Station. A one-way trip to Mars will take at least nine months, making pre-packaged food from Earth unsustainable due to shelf stability issues and mass restrictions.
Teams were tasked with designing systems for a hypothetical scenario: feeding a 15-person astronaut crew for 500 Martian sols, or about 513 Earth days. Each team submitted a design layout, meal plan, concept of operations, and walkthrough video.
Ukeje's winning design, called ANI after the Nigerian Earth goddess of harvest and fertility, combines controlled-environment agriculture, fermentation, fungi cultivation, and closed-loop nutrient recycling through bioreactors. The system is designed to produce 50 percent of food away from Earth and includes provisions for working through shortages of power, water, equipment, or crew time.
The second-place prize of $200,000 was awarded to Cislune of Rosemead, California for the Fresh, Ferment, Reserve food infrastructure, which grows model-selected crops, converts harvests into familiar foods using instrumented culture cassettes, and maintains an Earth-loaded reserve to supplement in cases of biological variability, utility curtailment, and rejected batches.
Additional winners included Ohā Kanu of Hawaii (Applied Frameworks Award), Orbital Health Systems of Evansville, Indiana (Mission Simulation Award), Autonomic Resilience Collective of Bentonville, Arkansas (Human-Centered Design Award), and Astrofood of Ellezelles, Belgium (International Winner).