The master
bathroom for three astronauts aboard the International Space Station is on the fritz
again just days before a trio of new spaceflyers are due to launch toward the
orbiting lab, NASA officials said Friday.
A temporary
telemetry glitch also sent the space station into a so-called survival mode earlier
this morning, changing the outpost's attitude and leading to system power downs
for several hours. That issue was quickly tracked to an electronics box aboard
the station, but the balky space toilet in the Russian Zvezda service module
continues to plague astronauts and flight controllers.
"It failed
late yesterday," NASA spokesperson John Ira Petty said of the Russian-built
space commode in televised commentary from Mission Control in Houston. "Russian specialists are
troubleshooting. The problem appears to be a [gas] separator issue."
It's a
familiar problem for space station commander Sergei Volkov and flight
engineers Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff. A similar glitch knocked the space
toilet out of commission in June, leading Russian engineers to rush a spare gas-liquid
separator assembly pump to NASA's Kennedy Space Center spaceport in Florida, where
it was packed aboard the shuttle Discovery and launched to the orbiting laboratory.
Volkov and
Kononenko resuscitated
the ailing space toilet during Discovery's STS-124 mission, which also
delivered the massive Japanese Kibo laboratory and ferried Chamitoff to join the
Expedition 17 crew.
The space
station's Russian toilet uses fans and airflow in place of gravity to collect
solid and liquid waste for disposal. The gas-liquid separator is part of the
liquid waste system. It weighs about 35 pounds (16 kg) and is about 1.5 feet (about half a
meter) long and 8 inches (20 cm) wide and tall.
It is unclear
whether there is a spare that could be added to Sunday's planned Soyuz TMA-13
launch, which will ferry space
tourist Richard Garriott and two new station astronauts to the orbiting
laboratory for a crew swap.
"In the
meantime, the crew has been instructed to use the toilet in the Soyuz [TMA-12]
spacecraft," Petty said.
NASA has paid
$19 million for a second
Russian-built space toilet, which will be delivered alongside other life support,
exercise equipment and sleeping quarters during a November shuttle mission. Having
two working main toilets is vital for the space station, which is expected to
double its crew size to six astronauts next year.
Meanwhile,
Petty said flight engineers in Russian and NASA's Johnson Space Center Mission Control
in Houston were still working at recovering systems from this morning's
telemetry glitch. While the malfunction was swiftly tracked to an electronics
box, backing out of the power down process is a lengthy affair, he added.
"The back
out so far has been accomplished without any damage or long term impacts to
station systems," Petty said.
The station's new Expedition 18 crew is set to launch into space on Sunday,
Oct. 12 at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT). NASA will broadcast the launch live via
NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's
NASA TV feed and space station mission updates.
advertisement
