The United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched a challenge to help solve to the issue of conserving and reusing resources for its future space missions.
Future journeys into the ‘final frontier’ will require better use and recycling of the limited resources astronauts will have at their disposal after leaving Earth’s orbit; the journey to Mars and back would currently take two to three years and what crews take with them will be all they have.
NASA says that to be as efficient and self-sufficient as possible, space crews will need to be able to recycle, repurpose, or reprocess things and make what they need from base materials.
We are looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into useful materials that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times – and we are looking for ideas to convert waste into propellant.
With this in mind it has launched the ‘Waste to Base Materials Challenge: Sustainable Reprocessing in Space’ on the crowdsourcing platform HeroX – a turnkey platform where you can design open challenges around problems that need to be solved.
It’s asking for people to share their ideas for waste management / conversion in several specific categories, including:
- General waste
- Faecal waste
- Foam packaging material
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) processing
Winning ideas in each category will each receive a prize of $1,000. Additionally, judges will recognise “best in class” ideas, awarding each a prize of $1,000. A total prize purse of $24,000 will be awarded.
Completely efficient is ‘almost impossible’
NASA says that to have a completely efficient cycle is ‘almost impossible’, and some waste will have to be jettisoned to reduce mass and free up space inside the spacecraft.
But ideally, crews aboard will have ‘little to almost no waste’, it says, since everything will be ‘broken down and remade into new things’.
The challenge is all about finding ways to convert waste into ‘base materials’ and other useful things, like propellant or feedstock for 3D printing.
NASA said: “We are looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into useful materials that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times – and we are looking for ideas to convert waste into propellant.
“Eventually, we would like to integrate all the different processes into a robust ecosystem that allows a spacecraft to launch from Earth with the lowest possible mass.”
NASA’s Logistics Reduction Project is developing the future of materials management in next generation spacecraft and also for surface settlements.
Winning ideas from this challenge will be included in a white paper that will be part of the roadmap for future technology development work.
