NASA to award $1Mn for food producing concepts to feed astronauts on deep-space missions

The day is not far when astronauts will make frequent trips to the Moon and eventually Mars, before establishing a base in the alien worlds. When that happens, feeding those will be one of the biggest challenges in space explorations. To ensure that the explorers from Earth get nutritious, tasty, and satisfying meals on long-duration space missions, NASA is inviting teams to pitch ideas for producing food during space missions. Named Deep Space Food Challenge, the competition was started under NASA's collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and has now entered the second phase. 

Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate said as per NASA's statement,

Feeding astronauts over long periods within the constraints of space travel will require innovative solutions. Pushing the boundaries of food technology will keep future explorers healthy and could even help feed people here at home.

Best ideas to be awarded $1 million

The second phase of the challenge has a reward of $1 million for the competitors who would create a food production technology, system, or approach for a crew of four astronauts under a three-year-long deep space mission. According to NASA, the competitors should also consider factors concerning the storage, preparation and delivery of the food including their production, processing, transport, consumption, and disposal. The reason why the production of food is being emphasised is that packaged food loses its nutritional quality over time. And for the astronauts visiting Mars for a multi-year mission, packaged food would not be a viable option. 

The agency says that plant growth systems, manufactured food products, and ready-to-eat solutions combined would play a big role in fulfilling their daily nutritional needs. Apart from serving the astronauts in space, these technologies would also help tackle food insecurities and shortages here on Earth to some extent, according to scientists. 

As mentioned above, this is the second phase of the challenge after the first ended in October 2021. NASA had awarded 18 teams a total of $4,50,000 in the first phase for their innovative food production technology that produces safe, acceptable, palatable, nutritious, stable and high-quality food products with minimum requirements. "We are excited to continue collaborating with the Canadian Space Agency to conduct the next phase of this challenge and identify solutions from across the globe", Reuter said.

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