Team members Evan Bell, left, and Jaime Toro assemble the flight hardware for NASA’s Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, on Oct. 10, 2019, in the Space Station Processing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. OSCAR is an Early Career Initiative project at the spaceport that studies technology to convert trash and human waste into useful gasses such as methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. By processing small pieces of trash in a high-temperature reactor, OSCAR is advancing new and innovative technology for managing waste in space. A prototype has been developed, and the team is in the process of constructing a new rig for a suborbital flight test.