NASA challenges you to create the next lunar toilets and launches a call for ideas to equip its next landing gear.
The astronauts may have to urinate and defecate when they float in space, but NASA seeks smaller concepts, more efficient and adapted to low gravity moon for future missions to the Moon . They launched a call for projects on Thursday with $ 35,000 in prizes, to be found here: https://www.herox.com/LunarLoo
” This challenge hopes to inspire radically new and different approaches to the problem of collecting and storing human waste ,” writes the American space agency in the technical prose it is used to. Apollo astronauts were in a bag (at least five have remained on the Moon , according to official records) and the toilets of the International Space Station today operate with systems of pipes and aspiration, weightlessness requires.
The puzzle of demanding specifications
NASA will give three prices (20,000, 10,000 and 5,000 dollars) to the most creative inventors for a system to be installed in the landing gear which will bring two astronauts to the Moon by 2024, according to the official calendar – remember that three companies are competing to build the lander.
The specifications are specified: the toilets must, of course, be used by men and women , operate both on the Moon (where gravity is one sixth of Earth’s gravity) and in microgravity (in space), occupy less than 0.12 cubic meter, and not make more noise than a bathroom ventilation, that is to say 60 decibels .
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