NASA to recycle space waste into water

Houston, November 20: NASA will be putting into place a new recycling water system that will turn astronauts’ urine and sweat into clean drinking water.

Scientists on board the International Space Station had been eagerly waiting for the Space Shuttle Endeavour to bring the new water recycling unit so that it could be installed on the space station.

The unit is also called WRS and was installed on Tuesday. It will be attached to the $ 19 million toilet that is being added during this mission. This new machine will convert the astronauts’ urine and sweat into drinking water.

All the astronauts need to do now is, attach the WRS and transfer all the urine which the crew has been saving throughout.

The costly toilet has extensive machinery which consists of funnels that will make the liquids flow into the WRS. This unit will then clean all the contamination by making the liquids pass through a series of filters. By doing this, all solid materials will get washed out.

High temperature catalytic reaction will be used to remove all other impurities and make the water safe for drinking.

As per Flight Director Ginger Kerrick, the samples will be tested on the flight's day 11. One cluster of water can be processed in two days. But the first time processed water would not be used for drinking purposes.

During earlier space missions, astronauts used their water once and then threw it. But this is not feasible if astronauts have to live in space for a longer period of time.

Don Petit, who is on his second space mission, said that on earth the water is recycled naturally. But now we need to learn the process of doing it on our own. The success of the WRS system will be of great help while planning the future long-term missions by NASA.

Leloy Cain, the mission management chairman for this mission was quoted as saying, “This is the most significant event of this mission, because without this technology we won’t be able to go back to the moon, or support life on a three-year journey to Mars.”

But the real question is whether the astronauts are ready to drink recycled urine? Researchers are also planning to make coffee with it. How squeamish does that sound?