International Space Station astronauts are eagerly awaiting the arrival of shuttle Discovery - it is bringing a new pump to mend their broken toilet.The station's urine collection unit, as opposed to its solid waste unit, has been malfunctioning for several days. This is causing some concern for the manned crew.
Nasa said it thought a separator pump was at fault, and the three male crew members were operating it manually.
“When we saw the toilet lid up and urine all over the floor we though hey it’s ship full of men so what do you expect. Unfortunately we soon realised it was due to a fault in the main pump. Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us," shuttle payload manager Scott Higginbotham said.
Space urinals generally use jets of air to guide waste down a tube into a container, where it is then separated into liquid and gas. On its website, Nasa said the crew first realised something was wrong when they "heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working".
The crew has replaced many of the toilet's working parts, but had to adopt "temporary manual operation of the pump", and a backup system for the separator unit. Nasa said one of its employees was rushing from Russia to Florida with the spare parts for the Russian-built toilet ahead of the shuttle launch. The space station's solid waste unit is said to be thankfully functioning well.
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