Pooping on other planets and the moon is an entirely different business, and it will be a messy business, but NASA is already finding ways to address this.
Pooping on the Moon Will Be a Messy Business
The United States, China, and other countries are in a race to bring the next humans to the moon. While the next batch of humans hasn't landed on our planet's only satellite, they already foresee the challenges in pooping there.
Since humans ventured into space, astronauts and mission planners have struggled with waste management and disposal in space. The authors of a 1971 paper on the topic bemoaned the fact that discussions about humans' biological roles tend to arouse amusement rather than curiosity. The researchers highlighted the topic's importance to human spaceflight despite its taboo nature, pointing out that "the astronauts have learned quickly the importance of gravity in the mechanics of defecation."
On Earth, the forces governing objects with mass cause our pee and feces to conveniently separate from our bodies when we go to the bathroom. Gravity influences poop in the same way that it affects planets and humans.
However, waste does not detach from the body as readily in micro- or lunar gravity, and it can behave erratically in storage, giving rise to catchy expressions like "fecal popcorning," which describes the motions of astro-poop as it bounces off the walls of space toilet containment tanks.
According to David Munns, a history of science and technology professor at John Jay College in the City University of New York and coauthor of a book on waste management in space with Kärin Nickelsen, a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, when humans are in space, the absence of gravity is noticeable as there's no force to pull the feces away from the anus. The issue escalates to become a stick liquid problem of surface tension. Thus, one needs to make sure to clean up with extreme care.
NASA's Lunar Loo Challenge
With NASA working on its next moon mission through the Artemis Program, the US space agency is already working on addressing this issue. The agency acknowledged that the astronauts will be eating and drinking while in space, which, as expected, will prompt them to urinate and defecate.
In 2020, the Lunar Loo Challenge launched, encouraging the global community to share their "novel design concepts for compact toilets that can operate in both microgravity and lunar gravity." The winning concept, called Translunar Hypercritical Repository 1 (THRONE), was partially influenced by the diaper genie product, with which many parents of young children would be familiar. It seals the waste in plastic during disposal to reduce odor.
According to Michael Rapley, Human Landing System crew compartment deputy manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the waste management design is still under review. The goal is to minimize potential impacts on the lunar surface.
Rapley added that creating a waste management system that can effectively collect waste in one-sixth gravity while on the lunar surface and in a weightless environment like that of the International Space Station in low Earth orbit is one of the main challenges facing NASA and its Artemis partners for their next-generation lunar missions.
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