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The ISS Is Getting a New Toilet
| The toilet currently on offer on the U.S. side of the space station was designed in the 1990s and based on its shuttle counterpart, according to a detailed review of space toiletry. But the apparatus has its flaws. It can be clunky to use, particularly for women, and it is "sensitive to crew alignment on the seat," sometimes resulting in messes, according to that review.
| So NASA has tried to keep the aspects that have gotten positive reviews while trimming mass and volume and making some design changes, like adjusting the shape of the seat and replacing the apparatus that compresses the waste. Another change mimics a feature of the toilet on the Russian side of the space station, where astronauts simply hook their feet into toe bars, rather than the thigh bars used on the American equivalent to anchor the astronaut in the microgravity environment.
| This is the kind of news that I wanted to hear today.
| https://youtu.be/zecnwqXe850
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| Later this year, the International Space Station will receive a new and improved toilet system designed to bridge the gap between current lavatorial space tech and what humans will need to make extended visits to, say, Mars, in comfort. Space.com reports:
It has a fancier name, of course; officially, the commode is NASA's Universal Waste Management System (UWMS).
https://www.space.com/new-toilet-coming-for-international-space-station-astronauts.html