Water Treatment Systems Make a Big Splash

In the 1960s, NASA's Manned Space Center (now known as Johnson Space Center) and the Garrett Corporation, Air Research Division, conducted a research program to develop a small, lightweight water purifier for the Apollo spacecraft that would require minimal power and would not need to be monitored around-the-clock by astronauts in orbit. The 9-ounce purifier, slightly larger than a cigarette pack and completely chlorine-free, dispensed silver ions into the spacecraft s water supply to successfully kill off bacteria. A NASA Technical Brief released around the time of the research reported that the silver ions did not impart an unpleasant taste to the water. NASA s ingenuity to control microbial contamination in space caught on quickly, opening the doors for safer methods of controlling water pollutants on Earth.