ISS Expeditions 10 & 11 Potable Water Sampling and Chemical Analysis Results

During the twelve month period comprising Expeditions 10 and 11, the chemical quality of the potable water onboard the International Space Station (ISS) was verified through the return and ground analysis of water samples. The two-man Expedition 10 crew relied solely on Russian-provided ground water and reclaimed cabin humidity condensate as their sources of potable water. Collection of archival water samples with U.S. hardware has remained extremely restricted since the Columbia tragedy because of very limited return volume on Russian Soyuz vehicles. As a result only two such samples were collected during Expedition 10 and returned on Soyuz 9. The average return sample volume was only 250 milliliters, which limited the breadth of chemical analysis that could be performed. Despite the Space Shuttle vehicle returning to flight in July 2005, only two potable water samples were collected with U.S. hardware during Expedition 11 and returned on Shuttle flight STS-114 (LF1). For these samples the average sample volume improved to 800 milliliters as a result of increased return capacity on Shuttle. The two-man Expedition 11 crew also had access to Shuttle potable water transferred over to the Station during the Shuttle return to flight mission. This paper presents the results of JSC chemical analyses of potable water samples collected during Expeditions 10 and 11. Samples collected in-flight with Russian hardware and pre-flight samples of Rodnik potable water delivered to the Station on Russian Progress vehicles during Expeditions 10 and 11 were also received from the Russian side and analyzed by the Johnson Space Center's Water and Food Analytical Laboratory. Analytical results for these additional ISS potable water samples are also reported and discussed in this paper.