The tallest plumbers in the world repaired the toilets on the International Space Station * NASA and the Russian Space Agency are breathing a sigh of relief, stating that maintenance workers are needed in space as well
Last Wednesday, when the attention was focused on the activation of the Kivu Space Laboratory, which is worth a billion dollars, an equally important step was taken for the welfare of humanity, or at least for the welfare of three of its representatives staying on the International Space Station and the guests who come to them from time to time.
Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, the flight engineer of the station's 17th crew, managed to replace on Thursday in about two and a half hours the broken urine collection pump installed in the toilet of the Russian Zavezda component, which was also the first component of the station to be launched into space about a decade ago. The experts who built the facility in Moscow confirmed that it works properly. This is not a trivial matter, if they had not been able to fix the services, it might have been necessary to abandon the station.
Konenko simply replaced the faulty pump in the toilet and thus restored the ability of the toilet to collect liquid waste. "I immediately saw air flow" said Konanko after activating the system, which is used to flow air that replaces the use of gravity in every national toilet facility. Three experiments to activate the services were successfully performed. The Russian engineers gave the staff members permission to use the repaired toilets but asked them to report on the condition of the facility after each use. Apparently the first to try them was Konenko himself.
The spare parts for the services at the space station were brought to the station by the space shuttle Discovery, after an emergency flight from the factory in Russia. After the plumbers' work, Kononenko said that the pump is successfully doing its job and the water can finally be drained. The staff members at the station suffered for ten days without being able to repair the services, and they reported many difficulties. They were forced to use a single and limited bathroom cabin located in the Soyuz spacecraft docked at the station and which will be used to return home two members of the 17th crew. Fortunately for them, the malfunction happened in time for the Russian space agency to send spare parts to the US in preparation for the launch of the shuttle Discovery. The astronauts also brought bags to collect liquid waste in case the repair did not go well. Currently, there are more than enough supplies for all the needs of the toilets and showers of the station, at least until the arrival of a Russian cargo spacecraft in the summer.
"It's a shame that we have to talk about services, but the real issue is life and the future of manned activity in space," says Kirk Shearman, deputy director of the space station program at NASA.
In the meantime, yesterday (Thursday) two astronauts - Mike Possum and Ron Garan - performed their second six-hour spacewalk, which was designed to prepare the various components of the Japanese space laboratory Kibu for connection between them.
The spacewalkers installed two cameras on the exterior of the Kibo laboratory. These cameras will be used to navigate the laboratory's robotic arm. Garan and Possum also prepared the upper part of the laboratory for the attachment of a liquid nitrogen tank as well as the logistics component of his stomach brought up on the STS-123 mission. The connection of the two components will be carried out in the third spacewalk. They also removed the station's outdoor TV camera which was suffering from power outages.
Possum also tested the engine of the Alpha Tunable Solar Collector in the station's left section. This is precisely the receiver that is working well, compared to its counterpart in the right part of the station that is suffering from malfunctions, but nevertheless Possum was asked to check it to prove that it is indeed working without malfunctions and that there is nothing interfering with its bearings.
