Thirsty? This NASA machine turns urine into drinking water for astronauts

While touring the NASA Ames Research Center, Electronic Products got a close-up look at the machine that can transform urine into viable drinking water.

This system can recycle all waste water including urine and hygiene water for astronauts to drink.

One of the most expensive components of space travel is the launch, so it would be pretty costly to keep launching fresh water into space all the time for astronauts.

Since water is one of the most crucial provisions an astronaut will need to live and work in space, research engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA, are developing dependable ways of recycling water.
 
One of the water-recycling options researchers are working on is an electro dialysis machine (seen in the image above) that filters urine into drinkable water.

A machine like this employs the science of forward osmosis which uses the potential energy difference between salt water and fresh water to transport the liquid across a semipermeable membrane while excluding all contaminants that may be in the water.

In the video below, Aerospace Engineer Mike Flynn of NASA Ames Research Center explains whether or not creating a water recycling solution with 100% reliability is possible.