NASA has put out a call to entrepreneurs and inventors to come up with a toilet that can manage the waste of astronauts making a nine-month trip to Mars.
This is the latest campaign by the US space agency, operating in partnership with leading crowd-sourcing platform HeroX, based in Houston, Texas.
Known as the 'Waste to Base Challenge', it asks the public to provide inventive approaches to waste management and conversion in four categories – faecal waste, trash, foam packaging and carbon dioxide processing.
The winners will each receive a $1,000 and some of the best ideas could be incorporated into future NASA technology that could travel to Mars.
NASA has put out a call to entrepreneurs and inventors to come up with a toilet that can manage the waste of astronauts making a nine-month trip to Mars. This is a moon loo prototype
Future missions to Mars and back, including time on the surface, could take up to three years, with limited scope for disposing of waste or gathering new materials.
With that in mind, NASA is looking for a series of waste management solutions that could operate on a future Mars spaceship, and are turning to the general public.
Traditionally, space agencies have put projects out to tender, with large engineering companies bidding for the chance to design and develop a solution.
In recent years, NASA has used the HeroX platform to seek inspiration from a wider variety of sources — sometimes in the form of a competition.
For this new project, HeroX is seeking 'innovative approaches to repurpose, recycle, and reprocess' the waste generated onboard to enable mission sustainability.
Since the logistics of supply ships to support a Mars mission are very difficult, the spacecraft needs to be as efficient and self-sufficient as possible.
This challenge is all about finding ways to convert waste into base materials and other useful things, like propellant or base matter for use in 3D printing.
'The challenge is looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into propellant and into useful materials that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times,' a spokesperson said.
It is unlikely a perfectly efficient cycle can be produced, but NASA hopes someone will come up with one that generates little to no waste.
NASA could eventually integrate all the different processes into a robust ecosystem that allows a spacecraft to launch from Earth with the lowest possible mass.
'This is exactly what our crowd is
