Ibadan, 21 August 2024. – NASA has awarded a total of $1.25 million to three U.S. teams in the third and final round of its Deep Space Food Challenge. The teams delivered novel food production technologies that could provide long-duration human space exploration missions with safe, nutritious, and tasty food.
The competitors’ technologies address NASA’s need for sustainable food systems for long-duration habitation in space, including future Artemis missions and eventual journeys to Mars. Advanced food systems also could benefit life on Earth and inspire food production in parts of the world that are prone to natural disasters, food insecurity, and extreme environments.
The current iteration of the challenge began in September 2023 and concluded at the Deep Space Food Symposium, a two-day networking and learning summit on August 15 and 16. Throughout the symposium, attendees met the finalists, witnessed demonstrations of the food production technologies, and attended panels featuring experts from NASA, government, industry, and academia. NASA subsequently announced the winners of the challenge at an awards ceremony at the end of the symposium.
The U.S. winner and recipient of the $750,000 grand prize was Interstellar Lab of Merritt Island, Florida. Led by Barbara Belvisi, the small business combines several autonomous phytotrons and environment-controlled greenhouses to support a growth system involving a self-sustaining food production mechanism that generates fresh vegetables, microgreens, and insects necessary for micronutrients. Likewise, two runners-up each earned $250,000 for their food systems’ successes: Nolux of Riverside, California, and SATED of Boulder, Colorado.
The Deep Space Food Challenge, a NASA Centennial Challenge, is a coordinated effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), which ran its own challenge in parallel. The Agencies believe that food production technologies could change the future of food accessibility on other worlds and the Earth.
