The NASA & Canadian Space Agency Deep Space Food Challenge asked teams around the world to solve one of the hardest problems in long-duration space travel: how do you grow food for astronauts over years, in microgravity, with no resupply? CRCTS made the final 10 teams globally. DBtronics was the embedded systems lead that got them there.
GLOBAL FINALIST TEAMS
FUNDING SECURED
YEAR COMPETITION JOURNEY
AUTONOMOUS GROWTH TRAYS
CRCTS — Deep Space Food Project
NASA & CSA Deep Space Food Challenge
Embedded Systems Lead
2022 — Pilot Phase
ESP32 · FreeRTOS · MQTT · Raspberry Pi
Top 10 Global · $100K Funded · NASA NYC
How do you build a reliable, autonomous food production system that can sustain astronauts on a multi-year deep space mission — in microgravity, with no ability to restock supplies, and minimal human intervention? CRCTS designed a system built around 48 autonomous growth trays, each needing to be monitored, controlled and coordinated in real time — without a human operator watching every node.
From a team forming around a concept to a full-scale prototype demonstrated at NASA in New York.
The CRCTS team forms and enters the NASA & CSA Deep Space Food Challenge with a concept for an autonomous, multi-tray food production system. The challenge attracts teams from around the world. At this point it's still just a vision — but the foundation is being set.
DBtronics is brought in during the pilot phase to build the communication backbone for 48 autonomous growth trays, implement FreeRTOS-based parallelization on ESP32 microcontrollers, and architect a Raspberry Pi central server managing the system from a live dashboard.
In January 2023 the team presents to the NASA & CSA judging panel. The MQTT communication layer and FreeRTOS control system are central to the demonstration. The system performs. CRCTS advances to the final 10 teams globally, securing $100K in challenge funding.
The final 10 global teams present their complete systems at NASA's New York facility. CRCTS demonstrates a working, full-scale food production prototype — every tray communicating, every sensor reporting, and the central dashboard providing real-time visibility across the entire operation.
The systems built by DBtronics were central to what the judges saw and evaluated at every milestone.
48 growth trays connected for reliable real-time data exchange — every node reporting and receiving commands without central bottlenecks.
Concurrent execution on ESP32 microcontrollers, so each tray handled sensing, control and comms simultaneously.
Aggregating all tray data into a live dashboard with full visibility across the operation.
In a global engineering challenge, demonstrations are the argument. The infrastructure had to hold up live.
48 nodes reporting in real time, with no single point of failure in the communication layer.
A full-scale prototype operating end-to-end in front of the NASA and CSA judging panel.
Performance in front of the panel converted directly into finalist status and $100K in challenge funding.
Of every team in the world that entered, CRCTS finished in the final 10. That result came from building a system that actually worked — reliably, at scale, in real time.
GLOBAL FINALIST TEAMS
CHALLENGE FUNDING SECURED
AUTONOMOUS TRAYS NETWORKED
NASA NYC FINAL DEMO
"Dian was a tremendous contributor to our NASA Deep Space Food Challenge project. He is a great team player who readily took on additional roles when needed. His knowledge and contribution to the project was highly beneficial and I would not hesitate to bring him back onto a project. I highly recommend Dian for any embedded systems project."
We architect the embedded systems, communication layers and control software behind ambitious hardware.
