ESPERANZA II — crew-time-constrained bioregenerative food system for a 15-crew, 500-sol Mars surface mission

Open post-challenge release of the ESPERANZA II design (NASA Mars to Table Challenge 2026, solo entry, submitted 11 August 2026, not selected as finalist). Everything needed to check the numbers is here: the delivered meal-plan workbooks, the scripts that recompute crew time and Earth-provisioned energy from them, and the preprint.

Paper (preprint v1, 18 pp.): 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 — PDF · web · 89-second trailer.

Open to collaboration — space agencies, universities, labs, chefs, engineers: mariajesuspuertaangulo@gmail.com · https://www.mariajesuspuertaangulo.com

Layout

paper/                   preprint PDF + LaTeX source + references.bib
data/                    2.1 meal schedule, 2.2 meal lifecycle (as submitted), results.json, per_sol.csv
scripts/                 01_recompute_from_deliverables.py, 02_figures.py
figures/                 paper figures (PDF)
submitted_deliverables/  Solution Summary, ConOps + appendix, Design Layout (as submitted)

Author: María Jesús Puerta Angulo (independent researcher, Tarragona, Spain) · ORCID 0009-0007-8096-5070 · Version: v1, September 2026

Contents

File	What it is
Puerta_Angulo_2026_ESPERANZA_II_crew_time_preprint_v1.pdf	Paper, preprint v1
2.1_MealPlan_Schedule_2026-08-06.xlsx	14-sol meal schedule (78 meals, per-meal nutrition) as submitted
2.2_MealPlan_Lifecycle_2026-08-06.xlsx	Meal lifecycle plan (1,004 ingredient lines with source, mass, prep/cook/clean times) + per-ingredient energy audit + crew-time basis of estimate, as submitted
01_recompute_from_deliverables.py	Recomputes per-sol galley hours, rolling 5-sol windows, partition by production method and Earth-provisioned energy fraction from the two workbooks. Output: results.json, per_sol.csv
02_figures.py	Generates the paper figures from results.json and stated design constants
results.json, per_sol.csv	Outputs of the above (deterministic)
1.2_SolutionSummary_FINAL_2026-08-08d.pdf	Solution Summary as submitted
3.1_ConOps_FINAL_2026-08-07.pdf, 3.2_ConOps_Appendix_2026-08-08c.pdf	Concept of Operations and its basis-of-estimate appendix as submitted
4_DesignLayout_2026-08-07h.pdf	Design layout as submitted

Reproduce

pip install openpyxl matplotlib numpy
python 01_recompute_from_deliverables.py   # reads ../data/*.xlsx
python 02_figures.py

Expected: galley mean 15.40 h/sol (peak 19.03 sol 3, minimum 13.35 sol 6), 76.98 h per 5-sol cycle, worst window 80.27 h (sols 10–14); Earth-provisioned 41.21 % of menu energy (per-sol 32.96–47.14 %).

Known errata in the submitted documents

• Solution Summary §4 cites "NASA-STD-3001 Vol.2 Sec. 6.4" for fire safety; the correct section is 9.8.2 (6.4 covers environmental hazards).
• The iron content of the delivered rotation (20 mg/sol) exceeds the NASA-STD-3001 spaceflight ceiling (8–10 mg/sol); this is declared as an open non-conformance in the paper.

Citation

Puerta Angulo, M.J. (2026). ESPERANZA II: crew-time-constrained bioregenerative food system for a 500-sol Mars surface mission — design package, 14-sol meal plan workbooks and reconciliation scripts. Zenodo. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22713680