Alexis Paillet is preparing Human Spaceflight exploration thanks to Spaceship France project. The ambition of the Spaceship network, initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2012 and supported since 2018 in France by the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES – French Space Agency), is to contribute to the research and development of some of the key technologies for establishing permanent outpost on the Moon and later on Mars. Valentin Fournel is Director of Eco-design and Reuse at Citeo, a state-regulated eco-organisation set up by consumer goods and distribution companies to reduce the environmental impact of their packaging and paper, by offering them reduction, reuse, sorting and recycling solutions. CNES and Citeo are collaborating to examine the life cycles and recycling of goods and consumables that will be used in future lunar and Martian missions. In this interview, Alexis Paillet and Valentin Fournel outline the avenues that the two organisations are exploring together.
What are the current considerations on the life cycle of objects and recycling within the International Space Station (ISS)? How does this differ from terrestrial constraints?
Alexis Paillet: Currently, there is not much recycling on the ISS, which mainly relies on consumables, whether for food (no in situ production), air and water (which are only partially reused using disposable cartridges), clothing, hygiene products, etc. Astronauts place waste in containers, which are then burnt in Earth’s atmosphere. With the possibility of a resupply mission once a month, this is the most cost-effective solution.
However, we will not have this option for lunar missions, where astronauts might only be resupplied every six months, and even less for Martian missions, where resupply would depend on the optimum launch windows (on average every 26 months). Therefore, it will be essential to turn all these diverse wastes into usable resources: recycling and, by extension, the whole life-cycle approach to onboard objects thus represent a new perspective, which did not really exist for ISS missions.
CNES has therefore consulted industry leaders of eco-design and recycling on Earth, including Citeo, to develop with them the future solutions that will be essential for such missions. There are two key issues in this work: miniaturisation and minimising the required consumption, particularly in terms of energy and water.
Valentin Fournel: The aim of this partnership for Citeo is not to put a giant recycling bin on the Moon, but to use an environment with radically different constraints from those we know on Earth to expand the range of possibilities. We face extreme technical constraints in terms of available resources (energy and water) and space — on the other hand, we can more easily free ourselves from the economic constraints of profitability and optimisation, which are very strong on Earth. Thus we are dealing with a completely differ...
