ABCnews.com – The crew on the International Space Station of NASA has announced the invention of Water Recycling Unit for installation on the space station.
The unit, known as the WRS, was finally installed Tuesday and will be hooked up to the new $19 million dollar toilet that is being added during this mission. It will be used to recycle astronauts’ urine and sweat, and turn it into drinking water.
The next step for the astronauts is to hook it up and fill it with the urine the crew has been saving for this occasion, The toilet is equipped with funnels that will channel the liquids to the WRS, which then runs solid materials like hair and lint through a series of filters. Any other contamination will be scrubbed using a high temperature catalytic reaction to create safe drinking water.
Flight director Ginger Kerrick hopes to test the samples on flight day 11. It takes two days to process a batch of water, but the first batch will not be used for drinking.
