Scientists Design Urine-to-Drinking-Water Astronaut Suit for Longer Lunar Missions
TapTechNews July 14th news, inspired by science fiction works, scientists have designed an astronaut suit that can convert urine into drinking water, which will greatly help astronauts carry out longer lunar extravehicular activities.
The prototype of this astronaut suit can collect urine and deliver it to astronauts for drinking through a drinking tube within five minutes after purification. Its design inspiration comes from the distillation suit in the science fiction novel Dune.
The developers of this astronaut suit plan to use it in NASA's Artemis Program, which aims to study how humans can live and work on other planets for a long time before the end of this decade.
Sofia Etlin, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University and a co-designer of the astronaut suit, said: The astronaut suit adopts an external catheter design based on vacuum, connected to a positive reverse osmosis device, which can continuously provide potable water and has multiple safety mechanisms to ensure the health of astronauts. At present, astronauts can only carry 1 liter of water in their drinking bags, which is far from enough for the longer lunar walking tasks planned, and these tasks may last for 10 hours or even up to 24 hours in emergency cases.
Currently, the Maximum Absorbent Garment (MAG) used to handle spacewalk waste has been widely criticized. This kind of garment is essentially an adult diaper, not clean, uncomfortable to wear, and prone to leakage, resulting in some astronauts restricting food and beverage intake before extravehicular walks, while other astronauts report urinary tract infections.
According to TapTechNews, the improved distillation suit system consists of a silicone collection cup that can be customized according to the different genital shapes of men and women and is wrapped in an undergarment made of several layers of flexible fabric. A moisture-sensitive vacuum pump connected to the silicone cup will automatically start when the astronaut urinates.
The collected urine will be transported to the filtering system and recovered into water with an efficiency of 87%. The device uses a pump to separate water from salt and extract water from urine through an osmosis system.
In just five minutes, 500 milliliters of urine can be collected and purified. The treated water is rich in electrolytes and can be directly delivered to astronauts for drinking as an energy drink.
The research team measured the size and weight of the system, which is about 38 cm x 23 cm x 23 cm and about 8 kg, and is considered small and lightweight enough to be carried on the astronaut suit.
In order to evaluate the comfort and functionality of this system, the research team plans to recruit 100 volunteers in New York for testing this autumn.