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Pooping Stars: NASA Reveals What Happens To Human Waste Aboard The ISS

This article is more than 8 years old.

Ever wondered what happens to astronaut’s excrement when they’re on the International Space Station? Well, wonder no more!

It turns out that the faeces is ejected from the station and burns up in Earth’s atmosphere as rather gross shooting stars, according to NASA .

We’re halfway through the NASA and Roscosmos mission to figure out what will happen to Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko after a whole year in space and to celebrate, the US space agency released an infographic on the effects and experiences of Kelly.

As well as what happens to his solid toilet output, Kelly will consume around 730 litres of recycled urine and sweat as water over the year.

NASA also outlined some of the detrimental effects of his long mission. Kelly will need to exercise for more than 700 hours over the mission just to keep his bones, muscles and heart strong.

He also has to deal with the shift in fluid from his lower to his upper body, caused by low gravity, which is part of the reason astronauts’ vision can be impaired by space travel. The equivalent of two litres of fluid will shift from Kelly’s legs to his head over the mission and if left unchecked, would cause intracranial pressure that can damage eyesight.

The problem is just one of the issues that NASA and Roscosmos hope the mission can help solve and thereby prepare them to send astronauts on even longer trips - to Mars for example. Kelly and Kornienko are using the Russian Chibis device to draw fluids back into their legs while they monitor the size of their eyes to track any changes.

The Chibis is basically a pair of rubber suction pants that the spacemen wear to draw some of the fluids, including blood, water and lymph, back down through their bodies. Just like a home hoover, the pants suck the astronauts in and then down, which expands the veins and tissues of their lower body, allowing fluids back in.

The agencies are also running a comparative genetics study using Kelly’s identical twin back home, retired astronaut Mark Kelly. Focusing on physiology, behavioural health, microbiology and molecular experiments, the study hopes to look at how spaceflight affects everything from human organs to perception and decision-making and from dietary differences to genes within cells.

Both the US and Russia will share the results of all their experiments and studies, helping both to reduce costs and improve efficiencies on any future long-term missions.

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