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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how future food systems are imagined through NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge series. Comparing its editions, it traces a shift from food technologies to integrated systems and shows how digital foodscapes shape which Earth–space food futures become visible or marginal.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how future food systems are digitally imagined and enacted through the Deep Space Food Challenge series. The first edition was developed as a joint initiative between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to support food production technologies for long-duration space missions, linking space food to both astronaut needs and Earth-relevant food problems in extreme environments. The second edition, led by NASA, reframes these concerns within a more explicitly Mars-oriented context.

The paper asks how these two challenge editions differently frame what counts as viable and desirable food futures. Drawing on scholarship on socio-technical imaginaries and futuring as performative practice, it conceptualises the challenge series as a digital futuring infrastructure through which particular visions of food systems are digitally enacted. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of the Deep Space Food Challenge websites, promotional videos, YouTube engagement, and public-facing materials produced by selected winning teams from the first edition.

The analysis identifies a shift from an emphasis on food production technologies and Earth-oriented applications in the first challenge toward a systems-based framing of food as mission-critical infrastructure in the second. Although this second challenge broadens participation by explicitly inviting multidisciplinary teams, including chefs, nutritionists, and designers, it continues to privilege system-oriented and technocratic imaginaries aligned with long-duration settlement. The paper shows how digital foodscapes shape the visibility of certain Earth–space food futures, while marginalising or rendering others invisible.

Keywords: Digital foodscapes; socio-technical imaginaries; Earth-space food futures; sustainability; NASA challenges