Chinyere Ukeje Wins $300,000 NASA Prize for Mars Food System

Chinyere “Chichi” Ukeje, a 25-year-old designer from Northeast Philadelphia just won $300,000 from NASA for a concept addressing how astronauts might eat fresh food on Mars.

Chinyere “Chichi” Ukeje, a native of Bowie, Maryland, took first place in NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, submitting a concept called Adaptive Nourishment Infrastructure (ANI), named after Ani, the Igbo Earth goddess of harvest and fertility. The name reflects Ukeje’s family roots in Nigeria and the Igbo community.

Ukeje was among the U.S. winners to receive a cash prize, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her winning submission, called the Adaptive Nourishment Infrastructure, combines controlled-environment agriculture, fermentation, fungi cultivation, and closed-loop nutrient-recycling bioreactors designed to produce half of a Mars crew’s meals, with the other half shipped from Earth, according to NASA.

As reported by AL.com, her modular food ecosystem is designed to cook fresh meals daily and keep working through shortages of power, water, equipment, or crew time.

NASA’s competition drew 113 entries from 33 countries, per AL.com, with a food plan built around feeding a 15-person astronaut crew for 500 Martian sols. A Martian sol runs roughly 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds, meaning the mission window works out to about 513 Earth days.