upworthy

space exploration

Science

Shooting stars: What happens when astronauts poop in space?

Astronauts use the atmosphere to their advantage.

via Canva/Photos

A shooting star above a winter landscape.

Astronauts must undergo extensive training before they can enter space. They have to learn spacecraft operations, survival skills, robotics, physical fitness, how to walk in space, and emergency protocols in case something goes wrong. They also need extensive training on how to use the toilet.

How do astronauts go to the bathroom in zero gravity?

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, a former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), says that astronauts must learn to recognize that the urge to go feels different in zero gravity. “How do you know when you have to poop on earth? It's actually because of the weight of the poop inside you. Tells you, hey, it's time to poop,” Hadfield says. “Well, if you're weightless, then your body's not gonna tell you it's time to poop. So you almost have to learn this new sort of fullness symptom that tells you it's time to poop.”


@_cosmic_enigma

How to poop in Space #astronauts #space #poop #iss #internationalspacestation #astronaut

Hadfield goes onto explain the rather ingenious of fans in space station toilets that mimic gravity for you. "Taking the place of gravity to pull the poop into the toilet is airflow," Hadfield explains. The fans work to suck the waste down once it leaves the body (this goes for urine as well, notes Hadfield). Though an impressive workaround, Hadfield certainly appreciates the effects of gravity after returning to Earth since it makes it a lot easier to go poop. “You're counting on gravity, cause gravity is gonna pull it away from you,” Hadfield said. “And without gravity, even when you're done pooping, the the poops just gonna stay sort of sticking to you. So we wear a rubber glove. And sometimes you have to, like, physically separate the poop from your body.”

Thank goodness for gravity.

johnson space center, space toilet, bathroom space shuttle, houston texas, space, engineering, Space Shuttle toilet on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.via Svobdat/Wikimedia Commons

Using air instead of water to suck waste into a space toilet makes things a lot less messy, too. You don’t want to flush your urine and feces in zero gravity. That would be a horror show. Being in space also does strange things to your poop. When astronaut Scott Kelly returned home after spending a year aboard the ISS, researchers found that his gut microbiome changed significantly from those typically found on the ground. It took a few months after Kelly’s return to Earth for his gut to return to normal.

iss, international space station, space, nasa photos, its, solar arraysThe International Space Station.via NASA/Wikimedia Commons

Where does the poop go when astronauts use the bathroom in space?

When Kelly was on the ISS, the urine was transformed into reusable water aboard the space station. The feces, for which he produced over 180 pounds during his 340-day stay in space, is collected into bags and put on a small craft that is launched into space. Much like a shooting star or meteorite, the waste eventually burns up as it reenters the atmosphere, so you don’t have to worry about astronaut poop landing on the roof of your house.

Astronauts must be cautious about when and where they use the restroom while in space, so a diaper can be a valuable asset during their mission. There’s nowhere to go on a spacewalk, so astronauts wear diapers to avoid aborting their mission if nature calls 250 miles above the Earth's surface. They also wear a diaper during takeoffs and landings because it’s too dangerous to get up and walk around the cabin.

You have to master an incredible number of skills to be able to make it into space as an astronaut. You need to know science and engineering, but also possess a good sense of self. You must learn new ways of interacting with your body, and one of the most important values you can cultivate while exploring the final frontier is humility.

From Your Site Articles
astronauts
Heroes

There's a big, salty lake on Mars! Yeah, that's huge. Here's what we know.

Holy cow, there's water on Mars!

An artist's rendition of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiting the Red Planet. Photo by AFP/Getty Images.

This is not a drill, Earthlings. It looks like our celestial neighbor has a big 'ol lake on it.

Er, maybe I should say, a big 'ol lake in it.

Italian scientists claim they've detected a large body of liquid — spanning about 12.5 miles across — submerged roughly a mile beneath a layer of rock and ice on the planet's south pole.

"Whoa" is right.

This isn't the lake! But this pic, taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express, does show a Martian river valley where water likely once flowed — a long, long time ago. Photo by ESA/AFP/Getty Images.

These brainy folks spent the last two years sorting through data collected from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. Liquid H2O is the only feasible answer to what their radar's seeing.

As Roberto Orosei from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics put it, "I really have no other explanation."

It must be water.

They're not exactly sure how deep the lake is.

But from what they can gather, the water isn't "some kind of meltwater filling some space between rock and ice, as happens in certain glaciers on Earth," according to Orosei, lead author of the study that produced the findings. It's a legit body of water.

Even though scientists know the lake is frigid cold — certainly well below freezing — its super salty consistency has likely lowered the melting point so that the water stays in liquid form.

Scientists have long suspected Mars was once a whole lot wetter than it is today.

Given that the planet's rocky, freeze-dried surface is scarred from what appears to be waterways from billions of years ago, scientists have gathered the Red Planet was once a lot more blue.

Mars' surface is one dry place these days. Photo by ESA via Getty Images.

But liquid water is the key to life as we know it. So if it's still on Mars ... well, you can put two and two together.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

These findings certainly don't prove Martians are paddle-boarding around their planet's south pole.

"We are not closer to actually detecting life," Dr. Manish Patel of the Open University told BBC News. "But what this finding does is give us the location of where to look [for potential life] on Mars."

"It is like a treasure map," Patel concluded. "Except in this case, there will be lots of 'X's marking the spots."

Let's get to searching, Earthlings.

Heroes

You can help NASA name a big, weird space rock. Name it something good.

If you're a wizard at coming up with names — you know, the kind of brilliant mind who'd call a dog Pasta Batman — NASA's got a job for you.

About two years ago, the New Horizons space probe whizzed past Pluto, sending back never-before-seen images and letting us soar over fantastically named features like the Sleipnir Fossa and Tartarus Dorsa.

But the mission isn't over. There are many more weird, distant asteroids, planets, and who-knows-what out there. We even have one in mind! A weird little thing nearly 4 billion miles away.

Onward! Onward toward the next dark, spacey world! Onward toward .... MU69!

Wait — "MU69"?

Really? That's what we're calling it? That's not a name. That's, like, a rogue captcha. It's half a license plate. It's definitely not what we should call the next step in space exploration.

And you know what? NASA agrees. That's why they're holding a contest to find a nickname for that big spacey whatchamacallit.

To help get people excited (and presumably to spice up some internal PowerPoint presentations), NASA is holding a contest to find a temporary nickname for the weird little object.

For now, you can go to NASA's website and submit, nominate, and vote on nicknames for the cosmic doohickey.

Names have to be nominated before they're selected to be on the ballot (NASA's apparently learned their lesson from that COLBERT thing). Current entries include Mjölnir (Thor's magic hammer), Z'ha'dum (a fictional planet in "Babylon 5"), and Pangu (an ancient giant in Chinese mythology).

The deadline for submissions is Dec. 1, 2017. A more formal designation will be given to MU69 once the flyby is completed.

Heroes

This NASA-backed experiment raises a big point about overcoming conflict.

When your roommate eats the last Oreo in the freezer, that's an annoyance. When your roommate eats the last Oreo you'll see in months, you might have a problem.

On Sept. 17, six volunteer crew members emerged from eight months of isolation. Their quarantine, part of a NASA-backed study by the University of Hawaii, could one day help humanity plan a drama-free Mars mission.

For the last eight months, the six volunteers lived in a tiny shelter on the slopes of an active volcano, sharing their living space, meager kitchen, and solitary shower.

From a distance, their house-sized habitat looked like a golf ball sitting in the loneliest sand trap in the universe. Photo from HI-SEAS V Crew/University of Hawaii News/Flickr.

The shelter wasn't exactly luxurious. Sleeping spaces were small, food mostly came in freeze-dried pouches or cans, and communication with the outside world was purposefully delayed 20 minutes to simulate vast interplanetary distances.

And outside? The forbidding, rocky landscape of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano surrounded them. If that wasn't discouraging enough, actually going outside was strictly limited: teams only and spacesuits mandatory.

Given all that, it'd be understandable for everyone to get a little cabin fever. But that was the point.

If we want to send humans to Mars, it's going to mean asking them to spend a long time alone — at least a year. And with even relatively simple, robot-based Mars missions costing a few billion dollars, we don't want personality problems derailing a mission. This study will help NASA learn how to help people get along during their long spaceflight.

The HI-SEAS V crew. From left to right: Brian Ramos, Laura Lark, Ansley Barnard, Samuel Payler, Joshua Ehrlich, and James Bevington. Photo from University of Hawaii News/Flickr.

The group used a variety of methods to track their emotional states, from journals to voice recorders. They also tested ways to de-stress, like using virtual reality to take a trip to a tropical beach.

One big takeaway? Even the best teams have conflict sometimes. What's important is how you deal with it.

"We’ve learned, for one thing, that conflict, even in the best of teams, is going to arise," principal investigator and professor Kim Binsted told the AP. "So what’s really important is to have a crew that, both as individuals and a group, is really resilient, is able to look at that conflict and come back from it."

Binsted couldn't share any details about this year's crew but said in an email that past crews have dealt with things like miscommunications, the stress of problems back home, and — yes — what to do when a favorite food runs out.

This was the fifth of six planned missions. For their efforts, the newly-freed crew was rewarded with a buffet of food, including fresh pineapple, mango, papaya, and doughnuts. None of it appeared to have been freeze-dried.

NASA hopes to send humans to Mars as soon as the 2030s.

Trending Stories