If you have ever shared a room with multiple people for days on end, you may know how clothes and living conditions can rapidly turn rather smelly. Imagine that happening in a confined spacecraft.
Even worse, since water on a space mission is in short supply, space travelers can't easily do their laundry. This is more than a body odor problem — unclean clothes and linens are ripe feeding grounds for infectious bacteria. Astronauts might wear the same clothes for days or even weeks, seal away used clothes in airtight bags, then return them to Earth for cleaning or cast them away to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
This is fine for short trips near Earth, but what about a months-long odyssey to Mars? Engineers have devised a new way for astronauts to dry-clean their dirty laundry. They've crafted a prototype "laundry gun" that sterilizes fabric by shooting violet-colored plasma into it.
English (US)