Penulis
The International Space Station (ISS) is one of the most sophisticated laboratories ever built by man.
It is home to the coldest location in the universe, supercomputers, and quantum lasers. In addition, it is also the location of the most sophisticated bathroom ever made.
This bathroom is known as the Universal Waste Management System , a high-tech toilet that was developed over six years and cost more than US$23 million (Rp333 billion) to manufacture .
This state-of-the-art toilet was delivered to the ISS space station in a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo capsule in September last year.
Unlike the two previous versions already on board the ISS space station, NASA's new space toilet is designed to work with a variety of future manned spacecraft.
In the near future, this state-of-the-art toilet will also be installed in Orion, the capsule that will take NASA astronauts to the moon in the next few years.
Melissa McKinley, leader of the NASA team working on the Universal Waste Management System , said the toilet could eventually also be used on a lunar spacecraft or on a spacecraft headed to Mars.
But before that happened, NASA sent it to the ISS for a three-year test to make sure everything went according to plan.
This state-of-the-art toilet is a white cylinder that has many of the features of previous NASA space toilet designs.
This toilet has a funnel to suck out pee, a waste compactor where astronauts defecate, and a seat with protruding lips around a small opening.
One of the biggest differences in NASA's new toilets is that they are compact and fully equipped, whereas the old ISS toilets are hidden behind bulkheads and make repairs difficult.
The toilet also has a system built to treat urine before it is piped into the space station's life support system for recycling into water.
But McKinley said one of the biggest changes was changing the design to better cater to the needs of female crew members.
"It was more complicated for the female crew to urinate and defecate at the same time because of the location of the urinary tract and where they had to position themselves to defecate," says McKinley.
There is a problem with the proximity of the urinary tract and bowel movements in women. So the seat and urinary tract have both been engineered to help the female crew.
The new version will be housed in a cubicle next to the existing toilet on the ISS, but the cabin is not designed to accommodate two side-by-side bathrooms.
So early last year, astronauts on the space station got to work preparing a new laboratory toilet. While erecting a new cubicle, the old room toilet leaked and spilled several liters of water before being repaired.
The toilets on the ISS have failed several times, but McKinley hopes NASA's new, simpler design will help avoid this problem in the future.
Where Does the Waste Go?