One of two toilets on the International Space Station is
apparently broken, NASA announced Sunday.
It's too early to tell if the toilet has a serious problem,
or can be fixed quickly, space station flight director Brian Smith said.
The station is currently host
to 13 people - a record number of crewmembers onboard at once. While that
toilet, which is in the U.S. Destiny laboratory, is down, astronauts can use the
other almost identical facility in the Russian Zvezda service module, as well
as the toilet onboard the space shuttle Endeavour, which has been docked
since Friday.
"We don't yet know the extent of the problem,"
Smith said. "It could turn out to be of no consequence at all. It could
turn out to be significant."
Station crews are investigating the symptoms of the balky
toilet, which appears to have a flooded liquid separator. This $19 million
commode was
delivered to the station by the STS-126 shuttle mission in November 2008.
Mission managers aren't sure yet how long the astronauts can
last with only two toilets. The station recently expanded its crew size from
three to six people, putting further strain on the existing facilities.
If needed, astronauts can use a bag system similar to what
Apollo astronauts had to use, instead of a toilet.
The shuttle bathroom is also further constrained by the fact
that it can't dump any waste water while docked to the station because the
water could pose a contamination risk to the new Japanese exposed science
facility that was installed yesterday near the shuttle's perch.
For now, this is not a serious problem, Smith said.
"For right now having all the shuttle crew members
using the facilities on the orbiter is not going to be an issue," Smith
said. "If it proves to be long term then we'll readdress the situation and
see what we have to do. In the short term there is no issue."
The space station has had toilet
troubles before.
The other bathroom in the Russian segment of the space
station broke last year when a pump failed that enabled the toilet to collect
liquid waste. That issue was fixed in June 2008 when astronauts installed a
replacement pump delivered by the shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission.
SPACE.com is providing continuous coverage of STS-127
with reporter Clara Moskowitz and senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for mission
updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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