The world's first all-civilian astronaut crew faced an unexpected problem
when they flew into orbit earlier this month - they had to fix the toilet
fan after it set off an alarm.
The Inspiration4 mission took off on September 16, sending four civilian
astronauts into orbit for three days onboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned in a tweet on September 21 that the
Inspiration4 crew had "some challenges" with the toilet, which was located
at the nose of the Crew Dragon spacecraft inside a glass dome roof. In an
interview with CNN on Thursday, crew member Jared Isaacman explained what
had happened.
Toilets in space have fans to generate suction, ensuring any human waste
goes in the right direction - but the fan on the spacecraft malfunctioned,
triggering an alarm, Isaacman said.
Isaacman told CNN that the SpaceX team had to instruct the Inspiration4 crew
on how to fix the fan, but that frequent communications blackouts
interrupted the process.
"I would say probably somewhere around 10% of our time on orbit we had no
[communication with the ground], and we were a very calm, cool crew during
that," Isaacman told CNN.
"We were able to work through it and get [the toilet] going even with what
was initially challenging circumstances, so there was nothing ever like, you
know, in the cabin or anything like that," Isaacman said.
Isaacman said that the Inspiration4 crew had previously talked to some NASA
astronauts about the toilet, and the astronauts told them that "using the
bathroom in space is hard, and you've got to be very - what was the word? -
very kind to one another."
No comments:
Post a Comment