With manned Artemis launches on the horizon, NASA is looking for sustainable solutions for waste management during long-duration lunar missions.
An initiative called LunaRecycle under the space agency’s Centennial Challenges Program aims to spur the design and development of recycling solutions for use on the lunar surface and/or inside pressurized lunar habitats. The goal of the program is to reduce solid waste streams during long-duration lunar missions under the Artemis program, as well as improve the sustainability of future space exploration.
“As NASA prepares for future human space missions, it will be necessary to consider how various waste streams, including solid waste, can be minimized, as well as how waste can be stored, processed and recycled in the space environment so that little or no waste will need to be returned to Earth,” according to the contract opportunity for Phase 1 of the LunaRecycle Challenge.
With so many missions headed to the moon, both private and government, some scientists say humanity has entered a new “lunar anthropocene,” an age marked by humans beginning to change the moon forever. After all, previous manned missions to the moon have left landers, flags, science experiments, golf balls and even human excrement on the lunar surface.
NASA wants to reduce the impact of astronauts on the moon with this new program. However, establishing a long-term presence on the lunar surface will require transporting a large amount of cargo from Earth to the Moon, creating the need for reuse and recycling processes to minimize disruption to the lunar environment. For context, everyday items such as paper, cardboard, plastics, metals, textiles and glass make up more than 50 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste, and only 40 percent of that waste is recycled, according to the call statement.
NASA is looking to address this recycling deficit head-on with this new LunaRecycle initiative. “This challenge will focus on recycling approaches for materials very similar to materials that are difficult to recycle,” the draft rules state.
“The challenge has the potential to highlight entirely new approaches to recycling; processes that improve energy and water efficiency; processes that reduce waste outputs and toxic emissions; and smaller solutions that could be deployed in communities in a more distributed manner. than recycling facilities today.”
The LunaRecycle Challenge will have two competition tracks, including a “digital twin” track that requires participants to design a virtual model of a system that can recycle one or more solid waste streams to lunar surface and produce one or more final products. In addition, the prototype construction track focuses on the design and development of actual hardware capable of recycling one or more types of solid waste on the lunar surface.
This will help meet the need that NASA envisions for “a variety of end products that may utilize materials created in whole or in part from the recycling process,” the draft rules state.
The competition will consist of two phases, starting with each team tackling the technical details of their proposed solutions for judging by a panel of judges. Phase 2 is dependent on the submission of viable approaches to the Phase 1 challenge under the proposed rules.
Total funding for the LunaRecycle Challenge is $3 million, with $1 million allocated for Phase 1 and $2 million reserved for Phase 2. Registration for Phase 1 begins in September, with applications due March 31, 2025. Evaluation will begin in May after which winners will be announced, along with the Phase 2 rules.