This August 24, 2015 video image released by NASA shows the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) on the Canadarm as it prepares to dock with the global Space Station.

Russian crews, who also inhabit the station, also collect condensate to filter, but they have separate water systems, and only the American astronauts drink recycled urine.

Long-term space travel will always be dependent on water and food and its availability. In June, Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated less than three minutes after launching from Cape Canaveral, Fla., sending a cargo capsule plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean.

The US space shuttle program closed down for good in 2011 and commercial industry-with the help of NASA funds-is racing to build new spaceships to ferry astronauts to the worldwide Space Station by 2017. The crew had been forced to suspend the process in July due to the expiry of the filters on the urine-processing system, which finally arrived on the Japanese craft after two failed supply missions. Around 93 percent of all the water onboard comes from the filter, according to the Guardian.

“Just recently, NASA was left with no other choice but to write a $490 million check to our Russian counterparts so that we can get our own astronauts to the Space Station”, he lamented. She said that it was all about getting past the psychological barrier that you are drinking recycled urine & condensate taken from the air.

Another difference between the American and Russian sides of the station is that the Russians use silver to clean the water supply while the Americans use iodine, which Carter says is a useful difference.

The space station carries roughly 2,000 liters of water in reserve for emergencies, split about evenly between the U.S. and the Russian sections of the ISS.

But on the ISS, where personnel are expected to stay for months at a time, the ways of accessing water for drinking are from condensation and excretion as urine.