NASA needs your help to make pooping in space easier

Spacecraft doesn’t provide that protections on its own.

The “Space Poop Challenge” – that’s what it’s called, we’re not making this up – is the latest project of the NASA Tournament Lab, a program to invite members of the public to help come up with “novel ideas or solutions” for space-related problems. Because flights to deep space will not rely on resupply spacecraft to deliver what astronauts need and dispose of trash, the Orion crew will have to take everything they need with them and bring it all back home.

While NASA waits for the success of its Advanced Plant Habitat on the International Space Station, Orion astronauts would just have to hold their space lettuce craving for some flavorful bar treats. But with longer and more risky spaceflights planned, NASA needs a system that can allow astronauts to go without a change for up to a week. What happens if a lady astronaut gets her period?

NASA will award $30,000 to solutions which will be used for future missions in the coming three or four years.

Today, astronauts wear heavy spacesuits during liftoff and spaceflight in case of an emergency and are required to wear diapers if they need to urinate or defecate, but that’s not a good long-term solution. Its unique features – including one-of-a-kind life support, propulsion, thermal protection and avionics systems – will enable longer deep-space missions and will take people to Mars.

For instance, earlier this month the two men and one woman who packed themselves into a Russian Soyuz space capsule had to wait two full days between launching from Kazakhstan and arriving at the International Space Station before getting to use a toilet.

Basically, when astronauts are in spacesuits they stick with diapers to handle waste. And once astronauts are zipped up, it is impossible to access any part of their body, Yahoo News reports.

But the space agency doesn’t have a way of safely dealing with bodily waste, including urine, faeces, and menstrual blood.

Food scientists at NASA are working on developing high-calorie food bars to meet these needs. It has been a problem for astronauts in space missions on how to deal with defecating while in a space suit for a week.

On upcoming missions to an asteroid or Mars, NASA has estimated it could take as much as 6 days, to reach proper bathroom facilities.

Apart from keeping the cargo load to a minimum, feeding the human travelers and keeping them physically healthy and mentally motivated, food scientists are also looking at packaging food items to keep them nutritious and edible in conditions where temperatures can fluctuate sharply, such as on the surface of Mars.