CASWELL: On ISS, the main purpose
is to do scientific experiments,
to do things that improve life on Earth.
The ISS is so big and so complex that there is no way that,
even with six astronauts,
they could possibly know how to do everything
in the entire Space Station.
My name is Tess Caswell, and I work in Mission Control
for the International Space Station
as an operator
for the Environmental and Thermal Operating Systems,
which we call ETHOS.
The environmental system is commonly referred to as ECLSS,
or the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems.
This was recently combined with the thermal system
to make ETHOS,
and it contains all of the hardware necessary
to keep astronauts alive on board ISS,
so all of the systems that provide oxygen,
provide nitrogen, this includes water to drink,
and keep it a nice, comfortable temperature.
All of the water on ISS can be recycled.
So, we have a system that can recycle condensation
into drinking water,
and we can also recycle urine into drinking water.
MAN: So, here we are today with the first round
of recycled water,
and we have these highly attractive labels
on our water bags
that potentially say "Brought to you by ECLSS"
and "Drink this when real water is over 200 miles away."
WOMAN: Cheers!
All: Cheers!
CASWELL: After it's been recycled, the crew can drink it.
We can put that water back into the toilet system
so they can use it for flush water.
MAN #2: It's our little restroom,
and there is the toilet.
CASWELL: And we can also send the water
to the Oxygen Generating System, or OGS,
to provide air for the crew to breathe.
MAN #3: So, obviously, here we cannot open the window
and exchange air,
but the life-support system is doing this for us,
so we continuously have open windows that suck in the air,
clean it, replenish it with oxygen,
and spew it out again.
CASWELL: There is a lot of chemistry involved
in producing oxygen on ISS.
We have to take water and break it apart
into the atoms that it's composed of,
so we take hydrogen and oxygen,
split them apart, break the water down,
and use the oxygen to put into the air
so the crew can breathe it,
and we send the hydrogen on to another system,
which combines it with the CO2
that the astronauts have breathed out
to create more water,
which can then go back into the loop.
The ECLSS system can impact us directly on Earth.
Water recycling is something that can be very useful
in Third World countries, places with drought,
places where it's hard to reach fresh water.
You can use the ECLSS technology to recycle water
in places like that, as well.
Before we had OGS,
we used the Russian Electron system,
which is very similar to OGS in that it uses electrolysis
to create hydrogen and oxygen from water.
But it does not produce as much oxygen as the OGS,
so it was not able to keep up 100% with the needs of the crew.
The impact of having all of that recycling equipment on ISS
is that we don't have to fly water up to the Space Station.
We don't have to fly oxygen up to the Space Station.
MAN #4: You know, if you were to buy a bottle of water here,
it'd cost about $20,000.
It takes a lot of rocket fuel
to ship water and other supplies into space.
MAN #5: Three, two...
CASWELL: Every time you launch a vehicle into space,
it costs millions of dollars.
MAN #5: Lift-off of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
CASWELL: So, if we can make it on the Space Station,
it's a lot cheaper and a lot easier
to keep the Space Station going 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, 365 days a year.
So, as you're working on this problem --
a breath of fresh air --
I hope you'll be thinking about generating oxygen
on board the ISS
and also be thinking about that hydrogen
and thinking about how we recycle that
to make more water that then makes more oxygen.
So, you're doing exactly what we use on the ISS
to create oxygen to keep you alive.