“Gravity-Defying Dilemmas: The Ingenious Solutions Astronauts Use to Conquer the Ultimate Space Challenge!”
Currently, there are three toilets aboard the ISS, located in the Zvezda, Nauka, and Tranquility modules. Like the earlier Shuttle WCS, these toilets have a less-than-perfect track record, with the most serious failure occurring on May 21, 2008 when the pump for the liquid waste collection system broke. At the time, there was only one toilet aboard the ISS, forcing the astronauts to use bags or the toilet aboard the attached Soyuz spacecraft for urine collection. The solid waste system remained unaffected. Thankfully, the launch of STS-124 was scheduled for launch just 10 days later, so a replacement pump was overnighted from Russia to the Kennedy Space Centre in the diplomatic pouch and successfully delivered to the ISS on June 2. It is estimated that the three toilets aboard the ISS suffer some kind of breakdown – thankfully almost always minor – around once every month.
But with NASA preparing to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars, even the relatively advanced toilets aboard the ISS are no longer adequate. Consequently, in 2018 NASA introduced the next generation of space waste disposal: the Universal Waste Management System or UWMS. Costing $23 million to develop, the UWMS is 40% lighter, 65% more compact, and significantly more energy-efficient than the existing ISS toilets, allowing it to be more easily integrated into the Orion capsules slated to travel to the moon on the upcoming Artemis missions. When installed aboard the ISS or Mars-bound spacecraft, the UWMS will connect to onboard water-reclamation systems, while on shorter duration missions like Artemis the waste will simply be stored in a tank for later disposal. UWMS is also designed for greater comfort and ergonomics, with a tilted, form-fitting seat and an elongated, integrated funnel that allows astronauts to urinate and defecate at the same time. Greater care was also taken to make the new toilet convenient for both men and women to use.
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