Recently we brought you the story of Spirit, the retired Mars
Rover. Now we bring you a tale from Atlantis. No, not the
mythical city, but the recently launched NASA Space Shuttle. The
voyage of Atlantis will be the last space shuttle mission from
NASA. Will another shuttle ever launch from the famed Cape
Canaveral launchpad? Maybe, if it’s written in the stars.
However, that isn’t stopping NASA from conducting its mission,
one part of which includes testing a kit that converts urine
into drinking water. Yes, you read that correctly. No, the
Atlantis astronauts will not be drinking their own urine aboard
the shuttle. NASA tells us that the kit, known as the Forward
Osmosis Bag (FOB) system, “convert[s] dirty water into a liquid
that is safe to drink using a semi-permeable membrane and a
concentrated sugar solution. FOB looks at the forward osmosis
membrane in a space flight environment and compares its
performance against ground reference controls.” Water filtering
technology is nothing new, but NASA is attem