Preprint v1 · 11 September 2026 · 18 pages · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22713680 · ESPERANZA II
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Bioregenerative food production is a candidate countermeasure for the NASA Human Research Program risk of inadequate food and nutrition on long-duration surface missions, but published architectures are seldom closed simultaneously against their lighting, water, thermal, atmospheric and crew-labour budgets. This paper reports the design of ESPERANZA II, a food system sized for a crew of fifteen over a 500-sol (513.75 Earth-day) Mars surface rotation within a multi-rotation surface programme, developed for the 2026 NASA Mars to Table Challenge. The design premise follows from the challenge constraints: mass, power, volume and water are declared unconstrained, whereas crew time is bounded by a 45-hour workweek per five sols for each of two food specialists. The system comprises 373 m² of LED sole-source crop canopy, a 40 m² cyanobacterial photobioreactor, 48 m² of Tenebrio molitor rearing and 50 m² of fungal culture, coupled to regolith processing and fermentation modules. Electrical demand is 58.1 kW mean and 64.0 kW peak; photoperiod tessellation holds canopy lighting peak within 9 % of its 30.4 kW mean. Canopy transpiration derived from absorbed light is 644 L per sol, recovered at 98.5 %. Photosynthetic fixation of 20.7 kg CO₂ per sol exceeds crew respiration (15.4 kg), with the deficit drawn from the Martian atmosphere; oxygen release is 116 % of crew demand. A 14-sol rotation of 78 distinct meals delivers 3060 kcal per crewmember per sol against a 3035 kcal target. Recomputation of all 1,004 ingredient operations of the rotation under a batch-processing protocol yields 15.40 h of galley labour per sol (range 13.35–19.03) and a worst rolling five-sol window of 80.3 h across the crew; the two specialists’ load peaks at 79.5–81.2 h of the 90 h budget, the range depending on whether grain milling is assigned to them or to the all-crew cooking rotation. Earth-provisioned energy is 41.2 % of menu calories on a per-ingredient audit (per-sol range 33.0–47.1 %) and 47.0 % on a conservative crop-nameplate basis, both below the 50 % cap; producing the EVA energy supplement in situ makes compliance independent of the EVA profile. Technology maturity ranges from TRL 3 (regolith mineral classification) to TRL 6–7 (LED crop production, fermentation). Workbooks and reconciliation scripts are released.
bioregenerative life support · Mars surface mission · crew time · food system design · controlled-environment agriculture · in-situ resource utilisation · NASA Mars to Table
Puerta Angulo, M. J. (2026). Crew time as the binding constraint of a bioregenerative food system for a fifteen-person, 500-sol Mars surface mission: design reconciliation and a 14-sol meal plan. Preprint v1, ESPERANZA Research. https://esperanzaresearch.com/paper/ — DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22713680 — Data and code: https://github.com/engimine/ESPERANZA_II
Preprint, data and figures: CC BY 4.0. Scripts: MIT. Design developed for and submitted to the NASA Mars to Table Challenge 2026 (solo entry; not selected as finalist). Related work by the author: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-10232328/v1.