Astronauts heading back to Earth from the International Space Station this month will be without a bathroom, thanks to an issue with the toilets on ‚s Crew Dragon capsule.
Instead, ‚s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide of the Aerospace Exploration Agency will have to rely on ‚undergarments‘ for waste management while aboard the Endeavour capsule, Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters at an October 29 press conference.
‚Our intent is to not use the system at all for the return leg home because of what we’ve seen with the fluids we are talking about,‘ Stich said.
Astronauts commonly use the undergarments to relieve themselves in spacesuits for launches, landings and spacewalks, .
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The toilet aboard SpaceX’s Inspiration4 craft malfunctioned during the crew’s three-day journey around the Earth last month, causing urine to leak inside the capsuleNASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Engineers first with the SpaceX capsule toilet design after civilians Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Haley Arceneaux and Christopher Sembroski returned from their historic three-day journey around the Earth aboard the SpaceX Resilience capsule in September, the first all-tourist trip into space.
An alarm went off during re-entry but it wasn’t until the vessel was back on Earth that SpaceX crew members determined the signal was indicating urine had pooled beneath the floor panels after a tube from the toilet came unplugged.
They fixed the issue by welding on a urine-flushing tube to the toilet, located on top of the capsule.
The flaw has also been detected on the Endeavour capsule, which flew SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission to the ISS back in late April and is presently docked with the orbiting laboratory.
The same issue was detected with the toilet on the Endeavour capsule, which will be bringing the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Akihiko Hoshide (left), French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Panele NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur back to Earth later this month.
As a result the lavatory will be off-limits and the crew will have to wear ‚undergarments‘ for waste management
Astronauts found the same unglued tube and evidence of urine leaking into floor panels, but with limited resources they have no means to make the necessary repairs to the Endeavor’s lavatory.
Crew-2 astronauts were expected to return to Earth this week but that may be pushed back as a result of a delay of the October 31 launch of the Crew-3 mission .
(A rescheduled Wednesday launch was also scuttled because of a ‚minor medical issue‘ affecting a crewmember, .)
SpaceX vice president William Gerstenmaier, who previously worked for NASA, told that the Inspiration4 crew didn’t even notice the issue until they got back to Earth.
‚When we got the vehicle back, we looked under the floor and saw the fact that there was contamination underneath the floor,‘ Gerstenmaier said.
According would be one of several upgrades to SpaceX’s next space tourism flight.
In a September 21 tweet, the SpaceX CEO obliquely referred to ‚challenges‘ with the toilet onboard the modified Crew Dragon module that launched the Inspiration4 crew into space for a three-day trip.
At that time, however, Musk did not go into detail on what the issue with the toilet was.
In the wake of the Inspiration 4 flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that upgraded toilets were definitely needed.
He added: ‚We had some challenges with it this flight‘
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The very down-to-Earth problem occurred on the orbiting laboratory when the astronauts were trying to install an enclosure around the on-board toilet for extra privacy.
This unfortunate debacle forced the scientists to scrabble around with towels to absorb the spherical beads of water that form in microgravity.
They were gathered in the bathroom to install the extra stall when they disconnected a Quick Disconnect (QD) for the potable water bus, which is used by the astronauts for toothbrushing, bathing, and other hygiene routines.
Approximately 2.5 gallons leaked before the bus was isolated by MCC-H flight controllers, a NASA .
‚The crew worked quickly to re-mate the leaky QD and soak up the water with towels.‘
While in a microgravity environment forms in spherical balls, its unclear if the water came out at high pressure at low pressure.
‚If it was a slow leak, it would have built up into a big, undulating blob that would have drifted off or crept along the wall with surface tension,‘ Tom Jones, a former NASA astronaut, told .
‚If it was under a higher pressure and it was coming out at a fast rate, it would spray and make droplets go flying across the cabin.‘
In October 2020, North Grumman launched its Cygnus capsule to the ISS.
The Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) zero-gravity toilet has been designed to better accommodate the female anatomy than current space lavatories.