NASA announced the winners of the Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table Thursday, with the top $300,000 prize being awarded to Chinyere Ukeje of Philadelphia, Pa.
Mars to Table launched in January 2026 as a follow on to the Deep Space Food Challenge, which NASA ran from 2021-2014 in collaboration with CSA. The original challenge focused on prototyped novel food production methods, while the 2026 competition asked teams to conceptualize space meals not as individual technology components, but as a complete food-production system that would offer a variety of food with limited crew time and work needed to maintain the food system. After judging 113 submissions by teams hailing from 33 countries and 28 U.S. states, the agency selected five winning teams for the 2026 challenge, awarding a combined $650,000.
“We’re thrilled to keep advancing the future of space food systems with this challenge,” said Jennifer Edmunson, program manager for Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Now, astronaut meals are almost cooked, packaged, and sent to the International Space Station from the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
In search of viable solutions for future space food operations, teams were tasked with ideating and designing systems in response to a mission scenario that addressed a 15-person astronaut crew for 500 Martian sols, or about 513 Earth days.
“The criteria we laid out for this competition were challenging, but intentionally so,” said Mars to Table head judge Dr. Alexander Meyers, who supports NASA Centennial Challenges through Noetic Strategies from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.