Flushed with success: Space toilet working again

William Atkins
Thursday, 05 June 2008 18:51

Science - Space

The zero-gravity toilet onboard the International Space Station is now functioning normally after a repair job was conducted on Wednesday, June 4, 2008.

Crewmembers onboard the International Space Station replaced a malfunctioning seven-year old gas-liquid separator pump, which first failed on May 21, 2008. At that time, the ISS crew attempted to repair the defective pump, but without any success.

So, with the STS-124 mission only a few days from launching, NASA ordered a replacement pump from the Russia Federal Space Agency (RSA), NASA's counterpart in Russia.

It was rushed to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in time for it being included on the assembly flight to the Space Station.

In addition, the STS-124 mission delivered and installed the giant Kibo pressurized module to the Station. In fact, on Wednesday, the hatch to the Kibo was opened for the first time in space at 21:05 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), adding extra working space for the orbiting facility.

Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide was the first to float into the compartment. He commented, "This is a great moment for the Japanese folks. It's been like 20 plus years to get this module up in space." [Softpedia: “ISS Toilet Back in Business - Astronauts enter the second section of Kibo”]

However, until the shuttle mission could be flown, the toilet was partially “out-of-order.” During this time, the solid waste portion of the toilet system was still working, with only the liquid portion unable to function properly.

The space shuttle Discovery arrived with a giant Kibo module in its cargo bay and a tiny pump for the toilet. Read on for additional info.