Sand dunes Full of cool inventions we’d love to see in the real world, NASA took inspiration from the less-than-glamorous innovation in designing a new spacesuit.

On the planet Arrakis Sand dunes It’s bone dry. That’s why the locals wear a special suit, a Still suitThis collects all the sweat and urine, filters it and directs it back so the wearer can drink it again. NASA looked at Sand dunes I decided that it is not Thubter Or energy shield, but this pee suit was an invention to enrich the world.

Spacesuit redesigned for NASA space mission

In the Artemis program, NASA is focusing on the question of how astronauts can survive longer on another planet. One of the biggest bottlenecks is the supply of moisture. A regular NASA spacesuit has a drinking tank that can hold one liter of water, which is not enough for what was planned. space walk From the near future. This will last from 8 to 24 hours maximum.

The Artemis 3 mission to the south side of the moon is scheduled to launch in 2026. Eventually, NASA wants to send a crewed mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. On both missions, astronauts will need to be able to walk long distances. Clearly: NASA needs a new spacesuit.

Astronauts won’t be wearing diapers soon, thanks to Dune

Sophia Etlin, a scientist at Cornell University, says she was inspired by this. Still suit Outside Sand dunes In developing the new spacesuit. Currently, astronauts wear diapers when they go on long space missions. Not only are they unsanitary and a recipe for bladder infections, but they also leak a lot. That’s not what you’d expect from a company with billions to spend, Etlin says. Watchman.

In Etlin’s new design, a silicone reservoir around the genitals collects urine. Once the astronaut needs to urinate, a vacuum pump is activated. This pumps the urine through a filter and recycles the urine back into water with an efficiency of up to 87 percent. It takes just five minutes to turn a pint of urine into water. It is then enriched with electrolytes, ultimately giving astronauts a kind of energy drink made from their own urine to drink.

At first glance, it didn’t seem appealing to us, but now that we’ve thought about it for a while, we want to have this in our underwear ourselves. Even though the thing weighs 8 kilograms. And with Earth’s gravity, that would require a lot of moving around.

The military is also interested in dune weapons: one of them is already in use on the battlefield.