UH Hilo students win $50K NASA challenge with Hawaii-inspired food system

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Two UH Hilo students are using traditional Hawaiian knowledge to help solve one of NASA’s challenges for future missions to Mars.

Seniors Leilani Jensen and Raven Kromer were selected as one of five national winners in NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, earning a $50,000 award.

Their project, called ʻOhā Kanu, adapts the Hawaiian ahupuaʻa land management system into a closed-loop food production system designed for space.

The framework combines hydroponics, aquaculture, field crops and orchards, allowing waste from one part of the system to help support another.

“We drew upon traditional and indigenous perspectives for how to produce food,” Jensen said. “It was designed so that there’s always food on the table, no matter what happens.”

The students mapped more than 200 crops and developed a two-week menu for astronauts, which they also cooked and taste-tested.

The menu included dishes such as peanut stew and a mushroom burger.

The pair said they discovered the competition months after it had already begun, leaving them with a shortened timeline to develop their proposal.

Despite the late start, their design beat out more than 100 final competitors, including research teams from around the world.

“One of the jokes we made was, ‘Ancient Hawaiians were the first space explorers,’” Kromer said.

Both students said the same ideas behind the project could also be applied to food security and sustainability here in Hawaiʻi.

Jensen plans to continue studying sustainable agriculture and Indigenous resource management, while Kromer plans to pursue studies related to icy moon missions after graduation.