Nasa to fire $23m toilet into space

Prototype, weighing in at 100 pounds and 28 inches tall, is about half the size of the Russian toilets currently in orbit

Nasa has flushed $23m down the toilet.

A new, titanium ablution solution will lift off on Thursday for a test run at the International Space Station before potentially being used in future missions to the Moon.

"Cleaning up a mess is a big deal. We don't want any misses or escapes," Johnson Space Centre's Melissa McKinley told the Associated Press before launch.

The prototype, weighing in at 100 pounds and 28 inches tall, is about half the size of the Russian toilets currently in orbit, and is designed to fit into Nasa Orion capsules returning astronauts to the moon in the near future, and possibly Mars beyond.

While older toilets were more catered toward men, the upgrade sees the seat tilted and sitting a little taller in a design that better accommodates women, in what may add further fuel to speculation Nasa secretly considered all-female missions to Mars.

Nasa astronaut Mike Hopkins, commander of the second SpaceX crew launching on 31 October from Kennedy Space Center, told the AP while the old design wasn't particularly hard to use, "sometimes the simple things become very difficult".

Astronaut Shannon Walker agreed. "Trust me, I've got going to the bathroom in space down, because that is a vital, vital thing to know how to do," she said.

"We actually use like a vacuum system, so imagine if you have a vacuum cleaner and you're sucking things down, you turn on a big fan, that's pulling everything down into the toilet," she says.

"We have a long funnel that we use to collect all of the urine, and then there's another seat that you can sit on, again with that fan pulling things through to collect everything and keep it contained.

Currently, 90 per cent of water-based waste like urine and sweat is recycled, and Ms Meir says that recycling rates will need to reach 98 per cent before the first human missions to Mars.