NASA Astronaut Explains Why They Recycle Their Pee On ISS

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Each time we would take like a liter, like a liter bottle, that weighs about a kilogram. That used to it used to cost us $10,000. Now it's like $3,000 just to take a bottle of water. So we recycle our water. But what that means is that Kimiya as I'm mentioning, it's a toilet thing. So every time we pee, it gets recycled. We take out all the bad stuff, we purify, distill the water and everything like that. As we go to farther and farther away from planet Earth, it's going to be more and more expensive to have that water. So what we've really done is really have learned how to recycle water aboard space station. I think we're even up to almost 97% efficiency, which is great. So we lose very little water. And it's going to be really important for us so when we go to the moon and and beyond. So good job space station.

[00:00:49]And we all need water.

[00:00:51]>> [laughter]