NASA wants your ideas to reuse trash and waste on a Mars mission - Space.com

NASA just opened a challenge seeking ways to go to Mars and back with a minimum of wasted materials.

The agency's tournament lab, along with crowdsourcing platform HeroX, have launched a "Waste to Base" challenge looking for ideas to recycle trash, waste, carbon dioxide and foam packaging materials during a two- to three-year crewed Red Planet mission.

Competitors have until March 15 to enter the challenge, and several prizes of up to $1,000 each will be awarded for novel ideas, out of a total purse of $24,000.

"This challenge is all about finding ways to convert waste into base materials and other useful things, like propellant or feedstock for 3D printing," the website stated. .

"The challenge is looking for your ideas for how to convert different waste streams into propellant, and into useful materials, that can then be made into needed things and cycled through multiple times.

The winning ideas are expected to be put into a whitepaper as "part of the roadmap for future technology development work" for NASA's logistics reduction project, which is working on matters such as new spacecraft and future settlements, the challenge description noted.

Moon missions may help inform the design for future Mars missions.

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