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Digital News Report – After today’s water recycling problem on the International Space Station, astronauts may need to be screened for excess calcium in their urine.
All kidding aside, this is a big problem. The original cost of the recycling system was $250 million when it first went into use in 2008. Station flight director, David Korth, joked “We’ve learned a lot more about urine than we ever needed or wanted to know, some of us anyway.”
The extra calcium in the urine could be due to bone loss from weightlessness. Program scientist Julie Robinson said “There are a lot of parameters including urine calcium and pH that everyone is looking at.”
By: Sam Lee