Researchers aim to develop space biomanufacturing from carbon dioxide, astronaut wastes
WashU-led consortium to facilitate integrative research and education for space biology
Astronauts can stay in space for extended periods fulfilling their scientific mission, but those extended periods lead to numerous issues for the astronauts — including what to do with human waste.
A nationwide consortium of researchers, led by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, plans to develop an anaerobic digestion process that converts human waste into organic acids and carbon dioxide for use as carbon feedstock. The consortium, Anaerobic Digestion for Advanced Space Technology and Resource Acquisition, or AD ASTRA, is funded by a three-year, $2.5 million grant from NASA.
The AD ASTRA team plans to engineer the cyanobacterium Synechococcus 2973, which is capable of photosynthesis and producing oxygen, to create food, nutraceuticals such as beta-carotene, and biopolymers from human waste. They will test this process in simulated micro- and low-gravity conditions, like that on the moon, and integrate the biological systems from anaerobic digestion to their newly developed photo-biorefineries, for example, engineering cyanobacteria and synthetic lichens. Their goal is to produce protein-rich biomass as a food source and other chemicals and to recycle human waste, which ultimately helps to sustain astronauts in space.
“This research addresses a critical and neglected area of space life support systems, focusing on an innovative process to convert waste that is essential for extended human spaceflights,” said Joshua Yuan, the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering.
Collaborators in the AD ASTRA research include Himadri Pakrasi, the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences; the University of Florida; Saint Louis University; Lincoln University in Missouri, a historically Black university; University of Delaware; and the NASA Lab at Kennedy Space Center. As part of the project, the Kennedy Space Center will host several students and postdoctoral researchers during the summer intern sessions in the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years for a visiting technologist and education experience.
In addition, researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering received a two-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop algae-E.coli co-culture as a novel photo-biorefinery. The researchers seek to determine how environmental factors in space affect the algae photosynthesis, metabolic interactions between algae and E.coli, and bio-production of high functional protein materials.
“These projects will determine if microgravity can influence the production phenotype of microbial hosts as well as how the environmental variables, such as extreme temperature change or low pressure, impact biomanufacturing,” Yuan said. “Understanding how cells or phototrophic consortia survive and metabolize under space environments will be crucial to engineering resilient and productive microbial cell factories under space conditions.”
Both studies aim to explore carbon dioxide-based biomanufacturing via algae, microbial coculture and synthetic lichens, a cyanobacterium-fungus system.
In related work, Feng Jiao, professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering, was part of a team that was a runner-up for the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge. The team, Nolux, constructed an artificial photosynthetic system that can create plant and fungal-based foods without biological photosynthesis.
Collectively, the three projects broaden the impact of the decarbonization research underway in the Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center (ERC) in the McKelvey School of Engineering.
