The next time you see a shot adept , just know : It could be astronautpoop .
Astronaut Scott Kelly ’s body live on through some funny changes when he spend a twelvemonth aboard the International Space Station with Russian astronaut Mikhail Kornienko . The commission was designed to study the effects of longsighted - term space travel and last about doubly as long as the average ISS trip . There was another coolheaded dimension to the experiment : Scott Kelly would be the guinea copper in place , while his identical twinned blood brother , fellow cosmonaut Mark Kelly , would persist on Earth and move as the control .
When the consequence from the “ Twins Study ” came in , NASAwas not let down . Scott Kelly’stelomeres beget longerin space , but shortened when he returned to Earth , a potential mark of tension and senescence . He lost 7 percentage of his body plenty . Body fluids tantamount to a2 - cubic decimetre bottle of sodasloshed up from his small body to his caput and chest . The microbial diversity of hispoopplummeted .
During the 2015 - 2016 mission , NASA also shared several numbers racket that surely concerned thetoilet enthusiastsamong us . Kelly drink about 730 cubic decimeter of weewee drawn from recycled weewee and sweat , and he bring on roughly 180 British pound of feces . Astronaut poop ca n’t just be flush down the waste pipe , of course , becausespacehas no sewer tube . Instead , it ’s drop off from the station along with other ISS glass . It will finally be incinerated by the extreme oestrus of atmospherical re - entry , sort oflike a meteoroid .
And , just like a shooting star , that red-hot chunk of poop methamphetamine will light up across the sky like a shot hotshot . But , as NASA cautions , “ your feces will not be shooting adept . ” Killing our dreams , NASA !
chance upon More floor About Humans in Space :
A version of this story was published in 2019 ; it has been updated for 2025 .
