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New NASA grant explores turning human poop into astronaut meals

570 views · Published 26 August 2015 · 3:05 · Indexed 8 November 2026

Channel: Real Thing TV · 2015 · News & Politics

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New NASA grant explores turning human poop into astronaut meals.

NASA funding $200,000 a year research for converting human poop into astronaut’s meal

NASA’s interest in manned missions to Mars and Moon is ever increasing and now it is focusing on ways to convert human feces into food for its on board astronauts during the long interplanetary journeys.

The U.S. space agency, NASA has sanctioned funds of $200,000 a year for up to three years to the researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina. The major aim of this research would be to discover ways on how to turn human poop into synthetic food!

With NASA’s growing interest in the long interplanetary journeys it is becoming very much essential to make provision for food that can sustain astronauts during long journeys such as extended Martian mission or any other long journey missions.

In a press release held last week, NASA reported that in all NASA has given out eight grants to universities around the U.S. and this grant is one among them. NASA said all of these grants are aimed at “innovative, early stage technologies that will address high-priority needs of America’s space program”.

Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said: “These early career researchers will provide fuel for NASA’s innovation engine. Technology drives exploration, and investments in these technologies and technologists is essential to ensure NASA and the nation have the capabilities necessary to meet the challenges we will face as we journey to Mars.”

 Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food: 

Well. not much has been disclosed regarding this poop project, yet.
However, Mark Blenner, a synthetic biologist at Clemson University, is leading the entire project and it has been titled “Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel”.

NASA, believes that this ‘poop project’ could have a big contribution in the space exploration by providing the means of “producing food on site at distant destinations by using synthetic and biology based approaches”.

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