Mondo Knows Facts
The station recycles almost all of its water
Urine, sweat and cabin humidity are distilled back into drinking water The life support system collects urine, condensation and waste water, then distils and filters it. Recovery has reached roughly 98 percent in recent tests, cutting the mass that must be launched from Earth. Oxygen is split out of water by electrolysis, and carbon dioxide is scrubbed from the air with replaceable beds. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: iss, life-support, recycling
The station recycles almost all of its water: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Urine, sweat and cabin humidity are distilled back into drinking water. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.