Astronauts living on the International Space Station soon will take recycling to new extremes: They'll get some of their drinking water from the toilet.

NASA has spent decades perfecting a system to transform urine into water that can be used in space for drinking, food preparation and washing. Agency officials say the water from the system will be cleaner than U.S. tap water.

The new $250 million machine was being unpacked Wednesday at the space shuttle's Florida launch site. Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to take it to the station this fall. If all goes well, the so-called toilet-to-tap system will be fully operational in six months.

Russia developed a similar system in the 1980s but it never flew in space because of concerns over crew squeamishness, says former station astronaut Leroy Chiao, now a space consultant. He says station crews expect hardships and aren't likely to object.