NASA said it is opening its $3 million LunaRecycle Challenge in a two-phased competition that will stimulate innovative solutions towards managing and recycling solid waste in lunar missions of extended duration.
 
LunaRecycle Challenge focuses on two tracks with the aim of developing systems to help minimize waste while improving sustainability in space environments.
 
With current plans for future human space exploration, sustainable waste management is fast-becoming important.

The long-duration lunar missions will require some advanced technologies in various streams of waste for storing, processing, and recycling.
There is a NASA commitment to reduce the environmental footprint of space exploration as much as possible but still obtaining minimal returns back to Earth.

The LunaRecycle Challenge aims to accelerate advances in Earth recycling that could improve efficiency, lower hostile output rates, and help develop household types of waste technologies applicable to communities anywhere.

In parallel, it is doing this in the context of NASA's renewed emphasis on the need for solutions that can not only work in the space environment but also mitigate increasingly urgent environmental challenges on Earth.

Participants are providing opportunities to ensure that the future for both space and Earth-based recycling systems is shaped together with the process of enhancing innovative sustainable waste management.