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Toilet in another Crew Dragon capsule it leaked In September, during SpaceX’s first fully custom mission, Inspiration4. According to SpaceX vice president Bill Gerstenmaier, none of the four passengers noticed the problem during the mission.
When the capsule returned from its three-day trip in orbit, engineers found urine in an interior under the Crew Dragon’s insole. Source: A broken tube coming out of the pod’s toilet and draining the waste into an internal tank.
Mr. Gerstenmaier detailed the toilet incident at a press conference with NASA officials in October, and explained how SpaceX is striving to fix the problem ahead of the launch of the new Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday. Mr. Gerstenmaier, the company replaced the old piping system with a new one that was fully welded to his tank and could not “ignite”.
These fixes were approved by NASA late last month (it’s been delayed several times since) just before Crew-3’s first Halloween launch attempt. But the toilet dilemma remained with Crew Dragon docking with the space station until Monday.
The toilet system in this capsule, called Endeavor, has also worried authorities that urine could leak under the insole, corroding some of the capsule’s aluminum parts and preventing the astronauts from returning home safely. SpaceX engineers conducted experiments on the ground to test whether urine mixed with an anti-ammonia compound could corrode aluminum.
SpaceX officials, citing their experiments and reviews on the Inspiration4 capsule, said the urine-oxone mixture had little effect on the aluminum parts. Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Crew Dragon mission management, told reporters at a press conference that the heavy coats of paint on Crew Dragon are “an excellent blocking agent for liquid.”
“We learned that the liquid evaporated in just a few days,” said Ms. Walker. “And that really limits the effect we observed when doing all of our post-flight inspections.”
Crew-2 astronauts have been instructed not to use Endeavour’s restroom during their 8.5-hour voyage home; they would use underwear instead — astronaut grade diapers embedded in flight suits.
Fortunately for Crew-3, the facilities are up and running during the roughly 22-hour trip to the space station.
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