Urine recycling machine irritates astronauts

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) spend a day setting up parts of the system to recycle urine and sweat into clean water, but their efforts are not rewarded. .

Parts of the two sewage treatment systems on the freight module of the ship Endeavor are being transferred to the ISS international space station.Photo: NASA.

On November 23, Michael Fincke, commander of the ISS and astronaut Donald Pettit, installed a centrifuge into a $ 154 million sewage treatment system brought by last week's Endeavor. This centrifuge is responsible for separating clean water from the wastes contained in urine and sweat.

Astronauts hope the wastewater treatment system will be operational for 4 days, but it only works for 2 hours after each start-up. After being repaired for the first time, the device operated for 3.5 hours and handled about 1.9 liters of water before turning itself off on the night of November 23. This problem causes the repair work to continue.

In the event that there is no other solution, Endeavor will have to bring the problem parts of the wastewater treatment system to Earth later this month for repair. This option may adversely affect the plan to add more people on the ISS because many water samples need to be taken back to Earth for inspection before becoming drinkers of astronauts.

The water recycling system brought up by Endeavor last week could allow six astronauts to work on the ISS station from the middle of next year, replacing the current three. Engineers are working to find out if 6 people can live on the ISS with a urine treatment device that only works every 2 hours.

'We don't know whether turning it on and off many times brings harm. Perhaps we have to ruin such a device to better understand it, 'said Courtenay McMillan, program director of the launch of Endeavor.

NASA's Endeavor carrying 7 astronauts and more than 6 tons of cargo connected to the International Space Station (ISS) on the morning of November 17. The mission of the ship lasts 15 days and the astronauts will make 4 space walks to repair the solar energy absorption system on the ISS station. Besides, they also have the task of installing new equipment on the station such as new restrooms, kitchen, gym equipment, bedrooms . with a total weight of 6,350 kg.

Endeavor and crew will land back to Kennedy Center on November 30. This is the fourth and also the last flight in 2008 of the United States. NASA plans to carry out 10 more flights of spacecraft before their spaceship expires in 2010.