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At the initial phase of the construction of the international space station (ISS) water supply will be provided by the systems located in the Russian segment. The paper reviews the systems for water recovery from humidity condensate and urine to be incorporated in the Russian segment of the ISS. The similar systems have been successfully operated on the Mir space station. The updates aim at enhancing system cost-effectiveness and reliability. The system for water recovery from humidity condensate (WRS-C) features an added assembly for the removal of organic contaminants to be catalytically oxidized in an air/liquid flow at ambient temperature and pressure. The system for water reclamation from urine (WRS-U) incorporates a new distillation subsystem based on vacuum distillation with a multistage rotary distiller and a vapor compression or thermoelectric heat pump. The updating of the WRS-C system will enable an increase in the multifiltration bed's life at least two fold.

Practically any processes vital for autonomous inhabited systems require forced transfer of liquids. Therefore, such systems normally incorporate pumps of various types. The specific features of the autonomous inhabited systems result in the fact that the pumping equipment of these systems also has some specific features. The methods of selecting a particular type of pump and general estimate of its specific features are considered for one typical kind of autonomous inhabited system, i.e., for the life-support and survival systems of space vehicles.

Thermal distillation nowadays is a preferential method to obtain water from solutions with high salt content in both stationary devices and autonomous systems of low productivity. Under these conditions the autonomous system should possess compactness, low specific power consumption and operate under various extremal conditions. In a number of cases the apparatus in which technological processes proceed in the field of action of centrifugal forces meet these requirements.

This paper reviews the development and testing of the distillation subsystem of water regeneration system from urine (WRS-UM) based on a method of vacuum distillation with a rotary multistage vacuum distiller and a thermal pump. Test results show that with relatively small power consumption the subsystem using rotary three-stage vacuum distiller provides high rates of heat and mass transfer processes, useful productivity and distillate quality. The conducted tests have confirmed that it will be efficient to use the presented system as a part of WRS-UM system in Russian segment of the International Space Station.