NASA can’t decide whether astronauts should wash their underwear

By Mark Harris

NASA Johnson/Flickr

NASA and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have signed an agreement to develop the first detergent for washing clothes in space – despite a long-standing recommendation against astronauts doing their own laundry.

While astronauts wear spacesuits when working outside the International Space Station (ISS), they wear ordinary clothes most of the time. Once these are too dirty to be worn, they are then either returned to Earth as rubbish or ejected along with other waste in a capsule to burn up in the atmosphere.

Under the new Space Act agreement …