Trash to treasure: NASA wants innovative space recycling projects

NASA is ready to pay up to $3 million (€2.74 million) in cash prizes for innovative ideas on how to recycle material waste created by its space missions. 

As space missions, especially future long-duration ones, create “inorganic waste streams” like food packaging, discarded clothing, and materials from science experiments, the US space agency wants to recycle this waste into “usable products” for science and exploration. 

NASA’s LunaRecycle challenge is looking to design and develop “energy-efficient, low-mass and low-impact” recycling solutions that will make long-term missions more sustainable, according to the pressrelease. 

“Operating sustainably is an important consideration for NASA as we make discoveries and conduct research both away from home and on Earth,” according to Amy Kaminski, programme executive for NASA’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing programme.

TheLunaRecycle challenge has two competition tracks, one for the design and development of hardware that can recycle one or more types of waste on the surface of the Moon.

The other stream will design a virtual replica of a “complete system” that recycles and then manufactures “end products,” NASA said. 

Existing waste management not available for high-altitude missions

Four astronauts can generate roughly 2,500 kilograms of waste in a year, according to a 2018 pressrelease from NASA, and that trash can be a “safety risk” to the crew. 

Astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) can process trash in a “high-temperature reactor” that breaks it down into water, oxygen, and other gases that can be used or vented, NASA said. 

Other waste is manuallyprocessed when the astronauts place it into bags where it stays in a designated vehicle until it either returns to Earth in the launch craft or burns up in the atmosphere. 

These waste disposal methods won’t be available for anything “beyond low-Earth orbit,” which are missions that go up past an altitude of 2,000 km.

NASA said on the LunaRecycle challenge website that it hopes the solutions that come from the LunaRecycle programme can also “influence and inspire better approaches and outcomes” for existing recycling problems on Earth with “processes that improve efficiency and reduce toxic outputs”.

Preparations underway for Artemis II in 2025

The LunaRecycle challenge comes as NASA prepares to launch Artemis II next September, its first human-crewed mission back to the Moon since the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s. 

The 10-day mission will bring four astronauts roughly 7,400 kilometres beyond the far side of the Moon. 

It will also be the first mission to prepare for the first woman, first person of colour and first international partner to land on the Moon in upcoming Artemis missions, NASA said. 

Artemis II is scheduled tolaunch in September 2025, while its sister mission Artemis III will attempt to land astronauts near the lunar South Pole, is still on track for 2026.