Winners of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge Combine Astronaut Oven & Air Protein Technology
Last week, NASA announced the winners of the final phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition designed to help explore and better understand how these organizations can feed people in space. The US Space Agency has awarded $750,000 in prizes in the second phase of the Deep Space Food Challenge, and the winning teams will compete in the final phase of the challenge along with $1.5 million in cash.
The start of the third phase is the culmination of almost two years of competition where hundreds of applicants competed for 28 in the first round of the eleven who won in phase 2, and as of last week, eight companies competing in phase 3.
The following five US teams are among the eight finalists in Division 3:
- Airline Company of Brooklyn, New York, developed systems and processes to convert air, water, electricity, and yeast into food.
- Interstellar Lab of Merritt Island, Florida, is building a modular biogenerative system to produce fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects.
- Kernel Deltech USA of Cape Canaveral, Florida, is developing a system to grow ingredients made from mushrooms.
- Nolux of Riverside, California, is developing a solution that mimics the photosynthesis that occurs in nature to produce plant- and mushroom-based ingredients.
- SATED (A safe, clean, effective, and delicious resource) of Boulder, Colorado, developed a space cooker that would allow astronauts to prepare a variety of meals with long-lived ingredients.
And NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have jointly announced three international companies as Phase 2 winners who will compete in Phase 3.
- The Mystery of the Cosmos of Melbourne, Australia, developed a flexible growing system to increase the efficiency of plant growth cycles.
- Mycorena of Gothenburg, Sweden, developed a system that uses a combination of microalgae and fungi to produce microproteins.
- Sun Food of Lappeenranta, Finland, developed a system that uses gas fermentation to produce single-cell proteins.
A few thoughts on the winners:
Two companies that build gas fermentation platforms – Wind Company and Solar Foods – made the final stage. In a way, the involvement of these startups brings the technology full circle since the idea of making food out of thin air was first explored by NASA in the 1960s when it was looking at ways to feed astronauts on long-haul flights.
SATED was the only one of the five US finalists not building a food production system but inventing a deep cooking tool! I think NASA realized that their astronauts would need more than just chocolate chip cookies baked during space travel.
Some of the more unusual ideas from the early stages — including cultured meat bioreactors, bread-making machines, and insect protein producers — didn’t make it to the final round, which isn’t all that surprising. Instead, NASA is likely to focus on those technologies that appear to be the most effective and best for producing food in extremely harsh environments.
