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Active TRL 7 (started at 4, targeting 8)
The objective of the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) project is to develop a toilet system that can be used across multiple future crewed vehicles and habitats. The International Space Station (ISS) Toilet Project effort will result in a toilet with reduced mass and volume that provides increased crew comfort and performance. A key feature of the UWMS is the urine pretreatment dose pump/pretreatment quality indication device which enables water recovery from urine.
The Toilet will first serve as an ISS technology demonstration (TD) payload. After the initial Mars Campaign Office (MCO) TD period, the UWMS will remain on ISS for an extended demonstration until the end of ISS life.
The ISS Toilet demonstration will validate collection of urine and feces. Effective collection is critical to maintain crew health and hygiene for long-duration habitats. Additionally, the ISS TD will demonstrate the ability to pretreat urine and deliver it to the ISS urine processor. The pretreat pump and pretreat quality sensor are important components of a future long-term space habitat water recovery system.
Current issues include a failure to dispense urine pretreatment during use, excessive noise, and loss controller function. The pretreat dose pump was redesigned with improved valves and conductivity sensor. The vendor is struggling to deliver the dose pump for the scheduled launch in 2026. The noise from the separator is driving additional design work.
The toilet system has a lower mass and volume than prior systems, and treats urine so that it can be safety processed by the ISS recycling systems. As habitable volumes decrease, so should toilet hardware so that crew comfort can be preserved. Having a universal, or standardized toilet design that can be adapted for multiple vehicles reduces overall costs. The Toilet effort could eventually lead to development of low mass/volume fecal canisters, increasing packaging and stowage efficiency, which significantly reduces logistics for exploration metabolic waste collection. The fecal canisters could be designed to enable water recovery from feces, which further reduces logistical mass and volume.
The Toilet could be utilized on short- and long-duration NASA missions to provide a compact toilet and urine pretreatment dose pump/pretreatment quality indication device to enable water recovery.
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