Technology Providing Water for Astronauts Could Help Tackle Droughts
- 10 years ago
As NASA is gearing up for their planned mission to Mars, providing water to the astronauts is one challenge that is being tackled by technology. The three year mission requires more water than the spacecraft can carry, so the astronauts have to filter their recycled urine and sweat.
As NASA is gearing up for their planned mission to Mars, providing water to the astronauts is one challenge that is being tackled by technology.
The three year mission requires more water than the spacecraft can carry, so the astronauts have to filter their recycled urine and sweat.
NASA scientists have looked to the human body’s natural processes to develop a water filter in the past, but now they are trying to create a bacteria with a living water membrane that could keep working for a lifetime.
This technology could be necessary here on Earth too, as impending droughts threaten densely populated areas of the American southwest and California.
A report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that: “Warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry soil conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, possibly reaching a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely if ever been observed in modern times.”
The water membrane could cut down on the cost of desalinating ocean water, or treating waste water if it works on a larger industrial scale than the one that will be used by astronauts going to Mars.
As NASA is gearing up for their planned mission to Mars, providing water to the astronauts is one challenge that is being tackled by technology.
The three year mission requires more water than the spacecraft can carry, so the astronauts have to filter their recycled urine and sweat.
NASA scientists have looked to the human body’s natural processes to develop a water filter in the past, but now they are trying to create a bacteria with a living water membrane that could keep working for a lifetime.
This technology could be necessary here on Earth too, as impending droughts threaten densely populated areas of the American southwest and California.
A report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that: “Warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry soil conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, possibly reaching a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely if ever been observed in modern times.”
The water membrane could cut down on the cost of desalinating ocean water, or treating waste water if it works on a larger industrial scale than the one that will be used by astronauts going to Mars.