Astronauts on extended missions to the surface of Mars and the Moon will require food systems that are completely independent of Earth.
To address this, NASA is running the new Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table.
This global competition asks participants to create a complete meal plan for a crew on Mars, along with concepts for food systems that use a variety of food sources and technologies to meet a crew’s nutritional needs.
The challenge will officially conclude in September 2026 and has a total prize purse of $750 000.
Challenge mission
Mars to Table is an international competition within NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge series, administered by the Methuselah Foundation.
The Challenge invites multidisciplinary teams to design complete, nutritionally sufficient integrated food systems for long-duration human missions, with Teams spending approximately seven months developing a Mars surface habitat food system through September 2026.
Mars to Table seeks solutions that:
- Deliver complete, safe, and enjoyable nutrition meeting 100% of daily nutritional needs with variety, safety, and palatability for sustained missions.
- Operate as fully integrated, end-to-end systems spanning production, processing, preparation, storage, and waste management as a cohesive whole.
- Minimise inputs while maximizing resilience and reuse combining pre-packaged, bulk, and in-situ food sources and integrating with life support systems for closed-loop or near closed-loop operation.
Key goals and constraints include limiting Earth-provisioned foods to no more than 50% of the system and integrating with environmental control and life support systems to enable efficient resource reuse.