This Plasma Gun Could Save Astronauts From Filthy Underwear
NASA is exploring a new invention called a 'laundry gun' that uses cold plasma to sanitize astronauts' clothing. This device could potentially eliminate the need for astronauts to wear the same underwear for extended periods. If successful, it may also help in sterilizing spacesuits and tools for future missions to Mars.
- ▪Astronauts currently wear the same underwear for up to a week before disposing of it.
- ▪The laundry gun uses a plasma beam to kill bacteria that cause odors on fabrics.
- ▪The technology is still in the proof-of-concept stage but shows promise for keeping clothing clean in space.
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/this-plasma-gun-could-save-astronauts-from-filthy-underwear-2000764049 |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 19:45:55 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T19:48:04.030Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T19:48:04.030Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | bkdz_woC4ZoS |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
As we saw with Artemis 2’s toilet debacle, astronauts deal with lots of inconveniences in space. One particularly icky situation is doing—or, really, not doing—laundry. According to NASA, astronauts bring two small suitcases’ worth of clothes and sometimes wear the same underwear for up to a week—after which they get loaded onto a ship meant to burn up in the atmosphere. Not…
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