The ISS toilet costs $23 million and separates urine into a centrifuge that recycles 98% of it back into drinking water - a closed-loop system that took NASA 40 years to perfect

The $23 million toilet on the International Space Station feeds a centrifuge-driven water recycler that reclaims 98 percent of urine, sweat, and cabin humidity — a closed-loop system NASA spent four decades getting right.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Editorial process

Somewhere above your head, roughly 400 kilometres up, an astronaut is drinking yesterday’s urine. Not metaphorically. The water in the bottle clipped to the wall of the International Space Station’s Tranquility module has been through a centrifuge, boiled under low pressure, filtered through a multi-stage distiller, and chemically scrubbed until it comes out cleaner than most tap water on Earth. The machine that does this — combined with the toilet that feeds it — took NASA roughly four decades to get right, and the newest version of the toilet alone cost $23 million to design and build .