[ad_1]
NASA’s first new space urinal in decades, a $ 23 million (€ 19.6 million) titanium toilet more suited to women, is running not so dry on the International Space Station before flying to Moon.
It is packaged inside a cargo ship that should have taken off Thursday night from Wallops Island, Virginia. But the launch was aborted with only two minutes remaining in the countdown. Northrop Grumman said it would try again Friday night if engineers can figure out what went wrong.
At just 45 kilograms and only 71 centimeters tall, the new toilet is about half the size of the two built by Russia on the space station. It’s more than the size of a caravan to fit NASA’s Orion capsules that will take astronauts to the moon in a few years.
Residents of the station will test it for a few months. If the shakedown goes well, the bathroom will be open for regular activities.
Now that SpaceX launches astronauts to the space station and Boeing less than a year from sending its first crew, more toilets are needed. The new one will be in its own position alongside the old one on the US side of the outpost.
Old baths are more suited to men. To better accommodate women, NASA tilted the new toilet seat higher. The new shape should help astronauts better position themselves for No. 2, said Melissa McKinley, project director at the Johnson Space Center.
“Cleaning up a mess is a big problem. We don’t want failures or leaks, ”he said.
Let’s say that everything floats in weightlessness.
As for the number 1, the funnels have also been redesigned. Women can use the elongated, removed funnels to urinate while sitting on the toilet to poop at the same time, McKinley said. So far, it has been one or the other for astronauts, she noted.
Like previous space toilets, the suction of air, rather than water and gravity, removes debris. The urine collected by the new toilet will be sent to NASA’s long-standing recycling system to produce water for drinking and cooking. Titanium and other strong alloys were chosen so that the new toilet resists all acid in the urine pretreatment.
Going to the bathroom in space may seem simple, but “sometimes simple things get really difficult” without gravity, said NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, commander of SpaceX’s second crew, launching Oct. 31. from the Kennedy Space Center.
While the old design isn’t that difficult to use, subtle design changes can make a difference for women, noted NASA astronaut Shannon Walker, a former space station resident who is also on the next crew of SpaceX.
“Believe me, I have to go to the bathroom in the space down, because that’s a vital thing, vital to know how to do,” he told The Associated Press earlier this week.
The typical space station population will go from six to seven with the next SpaceX flight, and even higher when non-professionals like tourists start showing up next year. Astronauts normally stay six months.
The last time NASA ordered a new toilet was in the early 1990s to host two-week space shuttle missions. The agency hired Collins Aerospace to provide the latest model; the company also worked on the transport urinals.
Also in the shipment of 3,600 kilograms aboard Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule: air tanks to compensate for a small leak on the space station, radish seeds for greenhouse cultivation, and a 360-degree virtual reality cinematic camera for shots of spacewalks.
Perhaps the most unique payload: Estée Lauder’s newest anti-wrinkle serum. The cosmetics company is paying $ 128,000 for an out-of-this-world photoshoot, part of NASA’s push to open the final frontier to marketing, industry, and tourism.
However, don’t count on perfumed scents to counteract bathroom odors.
The serum is fragrance-free and the 10 bottles will remain sealed until they return to Earth early next year.
