There's been an ongoing toilet crisis on the ISS ever since the last one broke, and we've been trying not to imagine all the pooping into bags that's been going on up there. Luckily, the new mega-recycling toilet was already in the works and arrived this week. Already, flight engineer Sandra Magnus has installed it and the plumbing is all hooked up and ready to go.

All they need now is some privacy. Apparently the toilet came with a flimsy curtain, which Magnus removed in order to install the toilet. Hopefully they'll re-hang the curtain - or maybe get a door or something for just a little more privacy.

The toilet is part of a much bigger overhaul of the ISS life support systems, which includes a complete water-reclamation system for recycling the astronauts' urine and sweat for use as gray water as well as (hopefully) potable water too. Right now, the water recovery system (pictured below) that will recycle urine has been tested back on Earth and the purified urine is deemed safe for use in washing. Further tests will reveal if it's safe to drink as well.

The water recovery system, it is hoped, will make life easier for a bigger crew in the coming year. Six astronauts will crew the ISS, doubling the number of humans living in orbit.

SOURCE: Space.com

All images via NASA.

While the technicians fix the “gas separator issue” (we can’t make this stuff up, people), the crew will redirect individual efforts to the loo in the visiting Soyuz spacecraft—yup, the very vehicle schlepping computer-game developer/lucky-bastard space tourist/commode commodore Richard Garriott. Meanwhile, NASA is shelling out 19 million bucks for a second, state-of-the-art Russian back-up toilet that’ll surely put that hoity-toity gold-plated throne in Hong Kong to shame.

Malfunctioning toilet? Possible former communists on board? We smell (among other things) a cover up! Vote on what you think the real reason is behind NASA’s latest crisis:

(a) a run-of-the-mill technical difficulties
(b) a clandestine alien invasion
(c) some knucklehead flushed a condom down the hatch
(d) a sentient central-computer-system hazing its peeps
(e) that damn cabbage-and-liver borscht that space-station commander Sergei Volkov insisted on whipping up

Image courtesy of davefigley