Astronauts on a mission could soon turn to their own poop for food, as a research project on recycling human waste just received funding.
NASA could soon let space travelers eat their own poop to sustain them on long space missions. Researchers will receive a funding worth $200,000 every year for three years to work on the project called "Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel."
The feces project is led by Mark Blenner from Clemson University in South Carolina, and it will study different methods of using microorganisms that can process waste products into something that can be eaten.
The ultimate mission for such project is to figure out how to turn feces into edibles. The project may seem unpleasant but it could greatly help long journeys deep into space, since great amounts of food from Earth would be difficult to transport.
NASA awarded the grant to eight U.S. universities — including Clemson — which will focus on "innovative, early stage technologies that will address high-priority needs of America's space program," the space agency's press release stated.
NASA's space shuttle program came to a conclusion back in 2011 and since then, the agency depended on commercial transporters, such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences — to send supplies to astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS).
However, delivery of supplies can get delayed and it has started becoming a problem, so the agency turned to other methods of producing food in outer space.
In May, the first red Romaine lettuce was grown in space, harvested 33 days after and sent back to Earth for testing. The second batch, which was grown in July, was harvested early this month and astronauts tasted them officially for the first time.
The first coffee was also tasted early in May with the help of an espresso machine intended for ISS.
