Astronauts on the SpaceX expedition may be facing a massive bowel problem!
The astronauts who will depart the International Space Station on Sunday have a broken toilet, which means they will be stuck using diapers on the way home.
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Going to the bathroom while in space is already a challenge on its own. To poop, astronauts used thigh straps to sit on the small toilet and to keep a tight seal between their bottoms and the toilet seat. It didn’t work very well and was hard to keep clean.
The poop is sealed inside a plastic bag and hauled off the next space trash day, Whitson said. When it’s too full, astronauts must “put a rubber glove on and pack it down.”. That’s what happens when the ISS toilet is working. However, when it malfunctions, astronauts will occasionally have to deal with floating poop.
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In 2018, NASA spent US$23 million on a new and improved toilet for astronauts on the International Space Station.
The astronauts also had to deal with the toilet leak, pulling up panels in their SpaceX capsule and discovering pools of urine. The problem was first noted during SpaceX’s private flight in September, when a tube came unglued and spilled urine beneath the floorboards. SpaceX fixed the toilet on the capsule awaiting liftoff, but deemed the one in orbit unusable.
NASA astronaut Megan McArthur and her three crewmates will spend 20 hours in their SpaceX capsule, from the time the hatches are closed until Monday morning’s planned splashdown.
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Mission managers decided to bring McArthur and the rest of her crew home before launching their replacements. The replacements are set to lift off on Wednesday night at the earliest.
“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges,” she said during a news conference from orbit. “This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission. So we’re not too worried about it.”
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