NASA is recycling 98 % of astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS into drinkable water

NASA has achieved a technological milestone that would at some point play an vital function in missions to the Moon and past. This week, the area company (through ) that the Worldwide Area Station’s Environmental Management and Life Assist System (ECLSS) is recycling 98 % of all water astronauts deliver onboard the station. Functionally, you may think about the system working in a manner much like the Stillsuits described in Frank Herbert’s . One a part of the ECLSS makes use of “superior dehumidifiers” to seize moisture the station’s crew breaths and sweat out as they go about their day by day duties.

One other subsystem, the imaginatively named “Urine Processor Meeting,” recovers what astronauts pee with the assistance of vacuum distillation. In keeping with NASA, the distillation course of produces water and a urine brine that also comprises reclaimable H20. The company lately started testing a brand new machine that may extract what water stays within the brine, and it’s because of that system that NASA noticed a 98 % water restoration fee on the ISS, the place beforehand the station was recycling about 93 to 94 % of the water astronauts have been bringing aboard.

“It is a crucial step ahead within the evolution of life help techniques,” stated NASA’s Christopher Brown, who’s a part of the workforce that manages the Worldwide Area Station’s life help techniques. “Let’s say you acquire 100 kilos of water on the station. You lose two kilos of that and the opposite 98 % simply retains going round and round. Protecting that operating is a reasonably superior achievement.”

If the considered another person consuming their urine is inflicting you to gag, fret not. “The processing is basically much like some terrestrial water distribution techniques, simply completed in microgravity,” stated Jill Williamson, NASA’s ECLSS water subsystems supervisor. “The crew is just not consuming urine; they’re consuming water that has been reclaimed, filtered, and cleaned such that it’s cleaner than what we drink right here on Earth.”

In keeping with Williamson, techniques just like the ECLSS shall be essential as NASA conducts extra missions past Earth’s orbit. “The much less water and oxygen we have now to ship up, the extra science that may be added to the launch automobile,” Williamson stated. “Dependable, sturdy regenerative techniques imply the crew doesn’t have to fret about it and may give attention to the true intent of their mission.”