There was no toilet for the SpaceX crew for their return journey. Astronauts who left the International Space Station on Sunday used the diapers. It is because the capsule’s toilet was malfunctioning.
Megan McArthur, a NASA astronaut, described the situation as “suboptimal” but doable on Friday. From the time the hatches are closed until the planned splashdown on Monday morning, she and her three crewmates spent 20 hours in their SpaceX capsule.
“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges,” she said during a news conference from orbit. “This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission. So we’re not too worried about it.”
Mission managers opted to send McArthur and the rest of her crew home before launching their replacements after a series of discussions on Friday. Bad weather and an undisclosed medical issue involving one of the crew had already delayed the SpaceX launch by more than a week.
At the earliest, SpaceX plans to launch on Wednesday night.
The last six months have been intense up there, according to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who will return with McArthur. The astronauts performed a series of spacewalks to update the station’s electrical grid, dealt with unintended thruster firings from parked Russian ships that sent the station spinning, and hosted a private Russian film team – a first for a space station.
They also had to cope with a toilet leak, which led to the removal of panels in their SpaceX capsule and the discovery of urine puddles. A tube came unglued and splashed urine beneath the floors during SpaceX’s private flight in September. It was at that time they noticed the problem. They repaired the toilet aboard the capsule awaiting liftoff. But the one in space was unfit according to SpaceX.
Engineers found that the urine had not harmed the capsule’s structural integrity and that it was safe to go back. The astronauts relied on absorbent “undergarments,” as NASA defines them. Hence, there was no toilet for the SpaceX crew.
On the culinary front, the astronauts planted the first chile peppers in space. McArthur describes it as “a wonderful morale boost”. They got a taste of their bounty last week when they added green and red pepper chunks to tacos.
“They have a nice spiciness to them, a little bit of a lingering burn,” she said. “Some found that more troublesome than others.”
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will join McArthur and Pesquet on the mission. On April 23, SpaceX launched them to the International Space Station. Their capsule has a certification for a maximum of 210 days in space. With their 196th day in orbit on Friday, NASA is keen to get them back.
Following their departure, one American and two Russians will remain on the space station. While it would be preferable if their successors came earlier so they could provide suggestions on how to live in space, Kimbrough said the surviving NASA astronauts will fill in the gaps for the newcomers.