The International Space Station is a big, climate-controlled environment that houses six people at any given time. As you can probably imagine, these humans produce odors just like the rest of us. So how do NASA and other space agencies make the International Space Station a decent-smelling place to live for those stuck there for months at a time?
There is no washer or dryer on board the International Space Station; no cosmic laundromat waiting to take astronauts’ quarters each Saturday morning. Astronauts aboard the ISS have hefty closets, a crew of six goes through 900 pounds of clothing each year.
A new NASA study is looking to reduce the amount of clothing waste by extending the amount of time astronauts’ garments can be worn. As part of the study, ISS crew members are being provided with exercise clothing that’s been treated with an antimicrobial compound, or made with antimicrobial yarn.
Traditional cotton garments also produce lint that gets trapped in the station’s air filters, which then need to be cleaned more often, notes Evelyne Orndoff, a textiles scientist working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The agency also is looking ahead to the day when cargo deliveries will be few and far between — if they exist at all — as astronauts begin flying missions that take them much farther than the space station, which orbits about 260 miles above Earth.
For added life, some of the exercise shirts and all of the shorts have been treated with the antimicrobial 3-(Trimethoxsilyl)propyldimethyloctadecyl ammonium chloride, manufactured by PureShield, Inc., under the brand name Bio-Protect 500, NASA said.
