Photo: SpaceX
In a recent meeting, SpaceX head Elon Musk said that the company’s toilets aboard the Dragon spacecraft were set to be upgraded before the next mission, and per a new report, the company is indeed set to fix an issue with the unit ahead of its next launch.
SpaceX will reportedly fix the Crew Dragon toilet ahead of a planned launch next week, after a problem with the unit was identified during last month’s Inspiration4 mission, according to CNN.
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Following the Inspiration4 mission, Mission Commander Jared Isaacman reported an alarm going off during the trip, letting the crew know about a problem with the toilet’s fan. The issue ultimately had to be solved by working cooperatively with SpaceX’s ground controllers to fix it during the mission.
Still, the crew reportedly didn’t have any serious issues with the toilet itself, or loose waste within the capsule, though SpaceX apparently noticed a number of other issues once the spacecraft was back on the ground.
On the issues discovered after the flight, SpaceX Mission Assurance Head William Gerstenmaier said, “There’s a storage tank where the urine goes to be stored [and] there’s a tube that came disconnected or came unglued.” Gerstenmaier continued, “That allowed urine essentially to not go into the storage tank, but essentially go into the fan system.”
With the toilets now fixed, SpaceX is set to launch again this weekend, featuring a crew of NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer. The crew will spend six months in orbit on the International Space Station (ISS).
