Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) returned to the Separation experiment, which is testing the technology for processing urine into water. Astronaut Ivan Wagner wrote about this on Twitter.
“Today we put a bucket of distilled water from the urine water recovery system into the condensate water recovery system, which will convert this water into drinking water,” he said. Wagner added that in the evening the astronauts will drink this water.
An experimental system for the regeneration of water from urine SRV-U-RS has been installed in the Russian module Rassvet. The standard system SRV-UM will be used in the new module “Science”, which is to arrive at the ISS in 2021, RIA Novosti reports. Urine processing allows to reduce the volume of water supply to the station by cargo ships from the Earth.
In 2016, British astronaut Timothy Peak shared his impression of drinking water obtained through the processing of urine. It tastes good, even though it comes from processed waste products, he admitted.
