We’re Revealing The Astronauts’ Dirty Laundry!

Imagine that you are on average 20 billion km from Earth. Of course your only concern what to do with your dirty laundry but after a while it starts to become like your living space and you feel some needs.

Even when we go on vacation for a few days, we have trouble packing our belongings, and ask the astronauts who spend months in a spaceship. In a 6-month journey, they need to take 540 pairs of underwear with them, store them dirty or even the ones that are dirty so that one clean pair of underwear is enough. launches into orbit should have.

How astronauts solve the laundry problem in space

In fact, the clothes on the space station are just as good as on Earth. does not get dirty quickly. Astronauts live in a controlled environment. For this reason, the temperature remains at a constant and comfortable level.

Also everything around them almost weightless They do not perform difficult physical movements as in Earth gravity. Still, astronauts do regular little exercises to keep their bodies from getting atrophied. Despite all this, of course, their clothes get dirty after a while. The solutions to this situation are as follows:

Wearing the same underwear for a long time.

According to the information received from the astronauts, they wore the same underwear. approximately 1 week they are wearing. In fact, some of them did not change their clothes such as trousers and shorts for 3 months.

According to Expedition Six Commander Ken Bowersox, a plastic bag He even found a way to wash his shorts using

Launch into space like a shooting star.

According to the Russian Space Agency, the crew must have enough food, water and other supplies to stay in space for a while. to transport these materials. unmanned advancement ships It is launched into space with the crew. The astronauts’ dirty laundry can also stay inside this ship.

Growing plants with dirty laundry.

Science Officer Pettit is trying to try and grow tomato and basil seeds on the station. when you decide had a problem. Since there was no soil, he had to find another way to grow the plants. Pettit wrote in his book Space Chronicles:

“I need a spherical core to build my seeder. An old underwear worked. At the station, we have enough material to change our underwear maybe every 3-4 days. Find a few nutrients, fold an old underwear into a sphere and sew Hold it in place with a few well-placed stitches using needle and thread from our set.”

Pettit is too strong for seeds to germinate. to stay cold After solving a problem that caused it, it sprouted seeds within 2 days in the seeder consisting of underwear and toilet paper.

Feeding the bacteria.

This isn’t really an option right now, but it could be in the future. While the Mir Station was still in orbit, Russian scientists spent months at the station. storing dirty underwear They were working on a new solution to the problem.

Scientists began to design a system that would use bacteria to digest the astronaut’s cotton and paper underwear. What happens when bacteria eat underwear, researchers find methane gas He even said it could be used to power spacecraft.

The system can even be used to get rid of some other waste in the station. While the system was never completed for use on Mir (the researchers said it could take up to a decade to find the right combination of bacteria), in the future people living in space may be an option for