NASA, CSA SPACE CONTEST ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF SPACE FOOD COMPETITION

Tue 16 November 2021:

Inventors worked in groups to come up with ways to enable astronauts consume nutrient-dense foods as effectively as possible, boosting nutrition and taste while conserving resources and waste. Longer space voyages in the future will require the development of self-sustaining food systems that do not require resupply from Earth.

Systems to grow plants and bake bread in space are among the winning submissions of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, announced in late October.

NASA announced the 28 winners from around 180 global submissions for the “Deep Space Food Challenge” in a prerecorded show on Monday.

The winning entries were announced on a NASA television broadcast, which featured Martha Stewart, a seasoned culinary show host, and former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.

“It’s probably no secret to all of you that good food, good living and good nutrition is very, very important to me,” Stewart said. “With that comes the possibility of good food for those long space journeys.”

Teams were challenged to create game-changing food technologies or systems that need minimal input to produce “safe, nutritious and palatable” food for long-haul space missions.

The “Electric Cow” team from Germany proposed using microorganisms and 3D printers to produce food from carbon dioxide.

The “Deep Space Entomoculture” team from Massachusetts suggested generating meat-style food products from dry-preserved insect cells transported into space and reactivated in a suspension bioreactor.

The Brazilian “LTCOP” team’s design aims to produce strawberries and taioba, a popular crop in southeastern Brazil, on Mars conditions and in transit.

Among the 18 U.S. winning teams were Astra Gastronomy of San Francisco, which proposed a means of growing, dehydrating and forming microalgae into a form of a trail mix with nuts and other ingredients; Beehex of Columbus, Ohio, which developed a Universal Food Fabricator capable of converting dehydrated plants and cultured meats into powder form to be stored; and a multifunctional plastic bag from Space Bread of Hawthorne, Florida, which allows crew members to store, combine and bake all the ingredients to make yeast-risen rolls.

The 18 winners from the United States and the ten winners from around the world won largely cash prizes and were asked to participate in the challenge’s second round.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated that the competition was largely designed with longer trips to more distant locations in mind. Nelson also stated that the space agency required food that would be useful on Mars missions.

In January, NASA launched the Deep Space Food Challenge in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency and the Methuselah Foundation. The competition is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program, which encourages people to submit ideas for various projects, such as designing a Mars home.

Photo: Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan in 1972 – Unsplash

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