SpaceX Gets Upgrade To Fix Toilet Troubles Before Crew Zips Off On Next Flight
Image via NASA
This Sunday, the fourth SpaceX launch will ferry NASA crew members from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station up in orbit.
In a report by The Guardian, it was revealed that the spacecraft’s previous flights had run into toilet troubles, when a tube came unglued, causing urine to spill onto the fans and beneath the floor.
“We’ve fixed this problem in the tank by essentially making it an all-welded structure, with no longer a joint in there that can come unglued and become disconnected,” said SpaceX vice president William Gerstenmaier.
Gersteinmaier said the company would be conducting checks to ensure earlier spills haven’t deteriorated the capsule over the last six months.
Engineers will submit updates on the new toilet system during a review meeting on Friday, with the final tests scheduled to be completed before Crew-3 zips off on the weekend.
“We at the commercial crew program have a little bit of work to do with SpaceX leading forward to flight,” said NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, Steve Stich.
“What we’re looking for is tiny clues or tiny, tiny imperfections, that somebody might look at a plot and wonder: why did that temperature go up here, or this pressure change here,” he explained.
“So you really just try to dig into all those sorts of things and try to understand those, and then improve things and fly safely.”
To catch the live webcast on October 31, head over here.
Timelapse of Falcon 9 and Dragon going vertical pic.twitter.com/WEp20JfU9t
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 27, 2021
[via The Guardian, cover image via NASA]
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