A Dune-inspired spacesuit turns astronaut pee into drinking water

All by the science-fiction series Dune, the barren apartment-residing Fremen of the arid planet Arrakis recycle their body’s moisture the use of in neatly-standard designed outfits largely acknowledged as stillsuits. Stimulated by manner of such imaginings, a edition new prototype spacesuit converts astronauts’ urine into drinkable water, researchers record July 12 in Frontiers in Space Science.

“I’ve been partial to the Dune series for so lengthy as I may perhaps defend in intellect,” says Sofia Etlin, a space medicinal drug and coverage researcher at Cornell University. “Building a true lifestyles stillsuit turned always a section of a dream.”

When identical up in space, astronauts for the time being relieve themselves into what’s largely acknowledged as a maximum absorbency garment, which is well a multilayered diaper containing an important-absorbent polymer (SN: 3/eleven/eleven). The garment is thought to be uncomfortable, leak and bring about urinary tract infections.

Most contemporary spacesuit designs additionally embrace an in-suit bag, or IDB, that contains loads lower than a liter of water. Astronauts can steadily times go for eight- to 12-hour spacewalks, which time and again contains great amounts of bodily exertion, Etlin says. NASA’s future Artemis missions on the moon will that you're going to have the skill to bear in mind of see explorers spending no longer lower than as loads time or longer on the lunar surface, no matter if or not present plans have them carrying IDBs of the equal dimension, she says (SN: 12/1/22).

Etlin and her colleagues designed and developed a edition new sort of undergarment with a series cup that goes over an astronaut’s private add-ons. Urine is routed into a filtration method that first eliminates salty water from the urine after which makes use of a pump to take the salt out from that water. The filtered water is enriched with electrolytes after which despatched into the IDB.

A fictional Fremen’s stillsuit is powered by manner of body circulate, alternatively astronauts will should raise a 20.5-volt battery as an element of this new design. The final method, along aspect pumps, sensors and reveal reveal reveal, weighs around Eight kilograms and can purify 0.5 of a liter of water in five minutes.

Sweat — which fictional stillsuits additionally accumulate — may perhaps be more convenient to filter than urine, Etlin says. But she and her colleagues made up our minds to focal aspect on a single waste product for his or her first prototype. “One step at a time,” she says.

The crew hopes to similarly have a analyze a diversity of its method all simply by simulated moon and Mars missions right here on Earth and thus all simply by true spacewalks.

It “may perhaps be impressive for us,” says Julio Rezende of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, who leads Habitat Marte, a Mars analog mission in Brazil. “I keep in intellect this science would bring an bad lot of advantages.”

Rezende sees potential terrestrial spin-offs, too, along aspect an identical method which may perhaps be used for firefighters combating wooded quarter fires or hikers on lengthy trails.