When Artemis II ventures to the moon next year, NASA wants to make sure they have a recycling solution for space waste. An astronaut will typically produce 125 kilograms of waste each month on average — an extra load the space agency would rather not carry home.
So NASA launched an international competition called the LunaRecycle Challenge: the mission is to design the best total recycling system to reduce non-metabolic waste and improve the sustainability of longer-term lunar missions.
Drawing 1,200 applications from 86 countries, NASA chose a University of Alberta spinoff company called Waste Parrot, along with 17 other competitors, to enter the final phase of the competition.
The project is led by AI researcher Junaid Tahir and principal investigator Rafiq Ahmad of the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing Systems (SMART) Lab, which works to enable the digital transformation of industries and society and bridge the gap between research and advanced applications.
Waste Parrot designed an autonomous, modular recycling model that uses artificial intelligence, a robotic arm and drones to recognize and sort space waste into different categories, feeding the shredded material into a 3D printer to make tools, gear and other useful hardware needed on a moon mission. As a potent side benefit, the company's goal is also to develop better ways to recycle here on Earth.
Waste Parrot will now enter phase two of the competition, where they will refine and scale up their prototype, testing it in harsh northern conditions similar to those on the moon. In early 2026, the winner of the LunaRecycle Challenge will take home $3 million and see their innovation launched into space.
