Nasa Launches Volunteer Urine Collection Drive

For the benefit of all, proclaims the motto of Nasa. Now the US government space agency is calling upon its employees - and indeed anybody passing by who has the urge - to give their all in one of its trickiest missions: to boldly go into a beaker.

Researchers on the agency's Orion program have put out a call for volunteers to donate urine as it tests toilet designs for the latest generation of space capsules.

The need is pressing. Urine poses a unique problem for space travelers: it contains solids that can clog the plumbing of even the most sophisticated of spacecraft. Its composition is such that it cannot be simulated.

The urine collection drive will last for 11 days, at the headquarters of Nasa contractor Hamilton Sundstrand at 2200 Space Park, near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

In a stern memo sent to "associates, employees and visitors" to the building, potential donors are encouraged to attend an "informational meeting" before the collection program starts in earnest next week.

The aim is to collect 30 liters a day, although anyone hoping to give a personal boost to the agency's mission should be aware of the potential pratfalls of space exploration.

A personal limit of 350 milliliters has been imposed, according to the memo. "While this is not a regulation of our testing," it reads, "you are not encouraged to over-hydrate as this could dilute the urine we collect."

Designers are hoping that the same chemical system used on the space shuttles will work with the new program. Orion is the agency's new crew exploration vehicle project, an effort to return astronauts to the moon.

Nasa hopes that the Orion will begin space flights to the International Space Station by 2014, and take astronauts to the moon no later than 2020.