The four astronauts of the Crew-2 mission, including Thomas Pesquet, will have to go without a toilet during their return trip to Earth. Everyone will be able to relieve themselves in "underwear" provided for this purpose.
According to a statement from NASA officials on October 29, the toilets of SpaceX's Endeavor capsule will not be available to the four astronauts of the Crew-2 mission upon their departure from the International Space Station in a few days. SpaceX engineers have indeedisolated a possible urine leak similar to that seen on the all-civilian Inspiration4 flight operated in September. Inspections carried out after landing revealed that a tube connected to a tank had come loose during the flight.
This tube "basically allowed urine not to enter the storage tank, but did enter the vent system “, then pointed out Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of construction and flight reliability at SpaceX.
Following this revelation, SpaceX and NASA wondered if a similar problem had affected the Crew-2 mission, which arrived at the space station in April. The astronauts therefore checked their capsule and also found signs of leaks . If the capsule did not suffer any corrosion damage likely to complicate its return to Earth, SpaceX still decided to take preventive measures for the return flight of this mission.
In case of urgent need, all crew members (Shane Kimbrough, Meghan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet) will therefore wear a special "undergarment". This is not surprising. These underwear have in fact long been used by astronauts to relieve themselves in their suits for launches, landings or spacewalks.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has since redesigned its toilets to avoid leaking issues on future flights .
So everything should go well, especially since this mission will be very short. In August 2020, it took the crew of the Demo-2 mission no less than 19 hours to return to Earth after undocking from the station. Since then, calculation efforts have made it possible to considerably reduce travel time. On May 2, the landing of the Crew-1 mission thus occurred only 6.5 hours after departure from the ISS .
This return of the Crew-2 mission should take place this ThursdayNovember 4 with a planned landing off the coast of Florida. As with any mission of this kind, however, nothing is set in stone.
Initially scheduled for Sunday, October 31, the launch of the Crew-3 mission had, for example, been postponed to Wednesday, November 3 due to bad weather. This mission has just been postponed again "at the earliest" to Saturday, November 6 , this time due to a medical problem. NASA has yet to reveal more details, other than that this issue is "minor and that it is "not related to Covid-19 “.
This mission will launch NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron. They will be accompanied by astronaut Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA). All of them will stay on board for about six months like Thomas Pesquet.
