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NASA's Advanced Life Support Breadboard Project at Kennedy Space Center focuses on biological regeneration of essential commodities for long-term space missions. If plants are grown on these missions, roughly 50% of the biomass will be inedible. Composting can reduce the volume of inedible biomass, reduce levels of leachable soluble organics, and produce a mineral-rich leachate that can be used to provide nutrients to subsequent generations of plants. Other wastes will also be generated on space missions; co-composting of these wastes should increase the rate and extent of degradation and should assist in control of moisture content during composting. To investigate these assumptions, we added simulated human solid waste to freshly harvested inedible wheat biomass and composted the mixture for 21 days.

Regenerative life support systems are under development to reduce the need for resupply of essential commodities during long duration space missions. If higher plants are used to supply food, oxygen, and potable water, composters could be used to stabilize solid wastes, provide CO2 and nutrients to the plants, and achieve pathogen reduction. Small-scale aerobic composting was used successfully to degrade organic compounds in inedible potato biomass. Soluble nutrients were extracted from the compost at concentrations that supported seed germination. Further work is indicated to understand the inhibitory effects of some leachates. Future composter designs should allow improved performance through better instrumentation and process control.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) intends to continue the human exploration of outer space. Long duration missions will require the development of reliable regenerative life support processes. The intent of this paper is to define the Kennedy Space Center Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) research plan for the development and testing of three candidate biological processors for a hybrid biological and physical-chemical waste recycling system. The system would be capable of reclaiming from inedible plant biomass, human metabolic waste, and gray water those components needed for plant growth (carbon dioxide, water, and inorganic salts), while eliminating noxious compounds and maximizing system closure. We will colaborate with AMES Research Center (ARC), Johnson Space Center (JSC), and academia, to design a functional biological-based waste processing system that could be integrated with the planned Human Rated Test Facility (HRTF) at JSC.