By Xinhua,
Beijing : The only toilet at the international space station was fixed on Wednesday by Russian astronaut Oleg Kononenko, said U.S. media reports.
Kononenko finished his job by installing a new gas-separator pump, ending two weeks of troubles with the commode.
Before that, the three men living aboard the space station had to use alternative facilities on the Soyue capsule by manually flushing the Russian-built toilet with extra water several times a day, which proved to be a time-consuming job and waste of water, not to mention an unpleasant chore. Fortunately, the solid waste system always worked.
“It’s unfortunate we’re talking about toilets, but that really is the life, that’s the future of human exploration in space,” said deputy space station program manager Kirk Shireman.
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.