Summary

Description	Water recycling research is taking center stage at several NASA facilities. New purifying systems are being developed to transform wastewater into potable water suitable for crew consumption and other uses in space. (Michael Flynn Aerospace Engineer, NASA Ames Research Center) 'In any environment, where humans are involved, they're going to consume water to keep alive and they're going to produce contaminated water. And if sources of water are limited, recycling that contaminated water to produce potable or hygiene water has inherent benefits to it. Water counts for about 85% of all the metabolic requirements to keep a human alive. So if you were to bring the water along with you you'd have to have a much larger spacecraft. And that would have significant impact on the cost.' To advance the Vision for Space Exploration, NASA needs to come up with a way to have enough fresh water to support long-term space missions. Shipping from Earth may not be the most economical or practical way
Date	2004-12-15
Source	images.nasa.gov

Licensing

Public Domain (US Government Work)