NASA Testing Wastewater Treatment Facility for Future Moon Base

A mobile wastewater treatment system built at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center departed the spaceport and arrived at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Graduate students there will test the technology under conditions designed to closely mimic the challenges of operating on another planetary surface.

Called the Divergent Deployable Wastewater Treatment Facility, it is designed to turn crew wastewater into useful resources that future explorers will need every day. At the University of North Dakota, teams will integrate the system with the Integrated Lunar/Martian Analog Habitat so student operators and NASA researchers can study how the facility performs when connected to a habitat-like environment and exposed to the kinds of operational limits crews could face on another planet.

The system fits inside an 8.5-by-24-foot trailer and brings together three biological reactor systems, a vertical garden, water-polishing hardware, environmental monitoring, autonomous control software, and safety systems.

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