International Space Station Toilet Craps Out
May 28th, 2008
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…. And probably considerably more than you ever knew or ever wanted to know about going to the bathroom in space…
Uh oh! There are a lot of problems which can occur on an orbiting spacecraft, and in an enviornment as demanding on technology as outer space, technical issues and equipment malfunctions are not uncommon. Many are relatively small, some may endanger the mission and occasionally there are issues that can be life threatening. However, some problems, are just, well, very unpleasant.
And right now the International Space Station is dealing with one which, though not a threat to the lives of the crew or operations of the station just plain stinks! It seems the toilet has been broken since early last week . Apparently the crew “heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working.” And with that, the one and only waste receptacle onboard the space station quit. The exact extent of the problem is currently unclear. The toilet system has two distinct operating modes, one for solid and one for liquid waste. The liquid waste system is the one which has been most directly effected. Although the problem has not yet been completely determined, it seems that the liquid waste systems fan and pumping system is not working properly, although reports are that the crew has been able to get it to work intermittently. The solid waste system reportedly is still functioning properly independent of the liquid waste system.
It is unclear at the moment whether the toilet is usable at all. Although the solid waste portion continues to function, it may be necessary to disable the toilet entirely in order to fix the problem hardware. The crew has been attempting to fashion a workaround to bypass the problematic sections of the toilet system by using an alternate collection mechanism for urination that reportedly uses some sort of bag that drains into the sanitary system. Having failed to get the problem resolved and dealing with jury-rigged solutions, the crew is fortunate that the Shuttle Discovery is already scheduled to visit the station next week, and will be bringing up some replacement parts for the system. (NASA has not stated whether a plumber will be riding up with the crew. However, it’s been speculated that in the zero gravity of space, a plumber may actually be able to work without the back of his pants falling down and showing his butt crack.)
In the mean time, the crew of the space station has apparently had to power down the toilet system pending a solution. Luckily, they do have an alternate place to go. Unluckily, it’s not the best toilet around. The Soyuz space capsule docked to the space station has its own independent waste disposal system, although it is extremely basic and has a limited capacity. The crew is currently making use of the Soyuz system when necessary and the rigged up toilet on the space station when possible. This is a late breaking event, so the status of the rigged system is not entirely known, but reports indicate that the Soyuz currently is the only reliable way of answering the call of nature. According to Russian mission control the crew was entirely dependent on the Soyuz system for at least a few days. The bathroom on the Soyuz is shown to the left.
Some background on the Space Station Toilet:
There is currently only one toilet on the International Space Station, which is located in the Russian-built service and habitation module. NASA hopes to upgrade the facilities with a more advanced waste system on a new American station module, but like most things related to the ISS, upgrades are behind schedule. Thus, for the time being the crew all shares the one facility, which has been just one of the limiting factors in the size of the station crew.
The toilet is externally similar to that of the Space Shuttle, although the components of the system are an updated version of the Russian design which flew on the Mir Space Station. The toilet is composed of two basic systems, one for urine and the other for solid waste. The urine collection system uses a suction tube to which a funnel is connected. Each astronaut has their own funnel for sanitary reasons. There are different types of urine funnels for men and women. The urine is collected in a storage tank temporarily before most of it discharged into space. A small amount of the urine is distilled and the water is the used to provide oxygen to the crew by splitting the water. Solid waste is collected separately and deposited into a collapsible bag system where it is collected and compressed by a vacuum. When the a bag is full it is transfered to the Progress spacecraft or to the orbital module of a Soyuz capsule along with other station trash. The modules are ejected and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere.
The discharge of urine is represents a loss of valuable water on the station and necessitates a the new water supplies be brought to the station by the Shuttle or Progress Resupply spacecraft. Nasa hopes to tackle the issue with the new toilet system planned for the space station. The new system is based on the Russian design, but includes a new more advanced treatment and recycling system which will extract and purify water from the urine, which will be recycled for station operations, production of oxygen and, yes, drinking water. The technology is proven and will be necessary in order to provide for longer duration missions and less dependence on supplies ferried from earth. Extraction of water from solid waste is not planned in the near term, as it would be both more difficult and provide considerably less water returned.
The Soyuz Toilet:
The International Space Station always has at least one Soyuz space capsule docked to the station at all times (two during crew transfer). The Russian Soyuz capsule has become the primary means of transporting crew to and from the station and is kept docked as a “lifeboat,” providing a means of leaving the station and returning to earth at all times, should an emergency occur. The Soyuz is the workhorse of the Russian space program and although it has had numerous updates and improvements since it was first deployed in the late 1960’s, the toilet facilities have not changed very much and remain quite basic.
The waste facilities on the Soyuz are intended to provide only the basics required for capsule flight. The craft itself is quite small inside and is not normally used for extended duration space flights. As a space station transfer vehicle, the Soyuz capsule normally only spends a maximum of a few hours flying on its own in space. The toilet is located in the orbital module of the Soyuz, one of two habitable modules, each providing about the space of a compact car. The receptacle is not actually a fixed unit, but rather is hand held.
The system works like most space toilets, by means of suction to draw the waste away from the occupant. The collection unit consists of a handle with a funnel and a sort of…bucket type of thing. The funnel portion of the unit is used as the urinal. Each crew member has their own funnel unit which connects to the unit for urination. The system is then turned on (and the knob is put in the … I kid you not … “Number 1″ position) and the crew member urinates into the funnel while the system sucks the urine into a holding tank containing antibacterial agents and absorbent material. The air is returned to the cabin after passing through a deodorizer and filtration unit. The system also has a backup urinal which is operated by a manual bulb pump, should the vacuum system malfunction. Women cosmonauts use a specialized adapter funnel, which apparently is a bit less functional.
Duce:
For solid waste there is one simple rule: Do everything possible to have to avoid using the Soyuz toilet system for solid waste. In order to avoid having to use the facilities for such needs, cosmonauts routinely go through a bowl purging regime for a day or two before space flight and on the Soyuz, and foods eaten on Soyuz missions are formulated for minimal indigestible residue. The short trips to the station normally mean that the solid waste capabilities of the Soyuz system are not utilized.
But if they are, this is where that bucket looking thing on the handled device comes into play. The system provides suction which helps form a seal to the body and assure that waste is cleared from the body. It also will help if the solid waste… just ain’t so solid. However, the solid waste is not drawn into the system as urine is. Instead, a special bag is used to line the receptacle. The bag has a seal and a specialized design which allows the system to provide suction through the bag. After use, there is a draw string that closes up the bag and seals in the contents.
So, that’s about it for how you use the Soyuz system. It’s functional, reliable and it gets the job done. However, it also has a somewhat limited capacity as it is intended primarily to serve the small spacecraft. Although the urine can be discharged from the spacecraft, there is a finite lifespan to the air filtration systems and there’s no word on how many of the solid waste bags the ISS has in their reserves.
Hopefully it will not be necessary to rely too much on the Soyuz toilet system.
Images, diagrams and information from:
MSNBC: $19 Million Funneled into Space Toilet
Plumbing on the Space Station
First African in Space: Toilet Training
First African in Space: Image Of Toilet System
Soyuz ASU Info and Images
Russian Zero Gravity Toilets
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Good Science, History, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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May 28th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I’m actually surprised the Soyuz has that much of a system as I would have thought it would be limited to something like plastic baggies or something. It actually doesn’t look too be for if you have to urinate. Number 2 into that thing does not look like fun but what can you do? There’s no space for a full sized unit. It’s about the best you could expect.
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May 28th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
They will just have to pee outside.
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May 28th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I am surprised that the space station does not recycle urine to recover the water. They spend months up there so water must be a big thing and I thought that the technology to recover water from urine was already pretty well established. Is it that complicated to just distill or otherwise separate it? It would be not that hard to completely clean.
That is a lot of weight if water has to be brought up constantly as it is consumed.
Most of the water that is consumed is either excreted as urine or as sweat or by breath. I’d assume that anything that evaporates will be somehow condensed by the air filtration system. If you used that and urine for water then you’d get almost all the water back without worrying about fecal recovery of water because that’s very little.
It would be a lot of savings of cargo. Water is dead weight really.
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May 28th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
They should sell an earth version of the handheld toilet system. There have been so many times when it’s a weekend and I really want to sleep in and not bother getting out of bed but I also have to really use the toilet. Getting up when you’re so comfortable sucks and ruins the whole thing because you just can’t ever get back in the place you were.
I’d imagine some people who really hate to leave the computer (maybe online gamers) would be another market for such a device.
I’m not sure I’d use it for anything other than number 1 though. That seems like pushing things. I guess it’s one of those things you have to do for spaceflight, but handling little bags of poo does not seem like the most glamorous aspect of being an astronaut.
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May 28th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
That’s a pretty full description of the Soyuz crapper. I now feel like I’m very well versed on taking a crap on a russian spacecraft. I don’t know how that will really be useful, but you never know. I bet I know more about the soyuz toilet than 99% of the population now!
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May 28th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
That’s interesting that they don’t do urine to water recycling on the space station. I’m sure they must have water recycling for “gray water” which is something that I believe has been done since Skylab. This is recycling of water used to wash garments, for showers, cleaning food preparation items. It is something of a necessity if you are going to allow for bathing with water at all, even limited. It’s actually not really more difficult to process urine. bathwater and that kind of thing requires nearly as much purification but urine would have more ammonia and salt to remove, which might be the issue with the filters. Really urine recycling is more of a psycological thing I think, becasue it’s not really that hard to do.
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May 28th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I am also surprised urine is not straight recycled on the ISS. I did some research and it seems that most of the water is a closed loop but urine collection is often discharged into space but sometime used. I think as it is said it is mostly used to make oxygen. They also have water from fuel cells, but I’m not sure how much those are used becasue of the general use of solar.
It seems that the urine would be used for making oxygen primarily it sounds like they basically dump it but the way it is recovered is they evaporate some and then it’s just grabbed by the same condensers that keep the humidity under control. There’s not much info.
I don’t really get the whole water to oxygen thing with discharging hydrogen though. It seems to make little sense. Why not just bring up liquid oxygen? I mean it sounds like it replaces one consumable with another but no positive return. Also, with fuel cells I’m wondering if it’s regenerated and also why the hydrogen would be dumped unless it was surplus and not enough oxygen to use it? Why would you have fuel cells if you’re splitting water unless you are undoing it for load balancing when you have high power needs?
Honestly, I’m very confused by exactly how they are doing this up there. It’s not making a lot of sense to me, but maybe I’m missing something.
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May 28th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Wow! This was a very interesting article… gross to think about but very cool. I have seen the waste collection devices for the Apollo missions which were basically like a bag with a tube leading to a condom-like thing, I as I recall. The ISS one looks a lot closer to a toilet.
I love the picture of the space plumbers!
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May 28th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Oh by the way, I want to add one thing: The two photos of the toilet on the ISS are actual photos of the toilet on the ISS. If you search for images yhou will find that there are a bunch of pictures which are reportedly to be the toilet on the ISS, but they’re actually ground mockups. The ground mockups are actually a bit nicer than the one on the actual space station, which is basically a stainless steel can with a sort of toilet seat thing on it and the retractable urine funnel shown.
Here are some of the images which are NOT the ISS toilet:
http://picasaweb.google.com/route66roadtrip07/CrossCountryTripDay3/photo#5071619894136094354
http://theworldsmostexpensiveblog.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/worlds-most-expensive-toilets/
Yeah, the real thing is, as you can see, a bit less shiny and refined and a lot more basic.
Also, you sometimes see the Space Shuttle toilet captioned as being the one on the ISS. It’s not used on the ISS (Well, unless the shuttle is docked) and actually the shuttle toilet is kinda nicer because the astronauts don’t have to worry about the waste, as it all gets chopped up and put into a holding tank on the shuttle. The tank is evacuated to dry out the liquid and the solid is removed on the ground. It’s a bit like an aircraft toilet in the storage system.
The ISS does not have the benefit of ground crews to clear out a tank after a relatively short flight, so it’s not as simple as flushing. It uses bags that need to be changed and stuff like that. The shuttle one looks more pleasant in general, but it doesn’t have the endurance.
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May 28th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I found this post facinating and kinda nasty at the same time
Anyways I did some looking online and the real space toilets never look as good as the ones in the mockups.
Here’s the one from Mir which is what the one on the ISS is based on. I guess they’re basically the same because what can you do with a toilet now that you couldn’t in the 80’s, right?
http://bp2.blogger.com/_VRIPUQofXu8/RfwX_cif22I/AAAAAAAAASk/r7-62LSexeY/s1600-h/mirtoilet.jpg
I can’t find any good pictures of the skylab one though. Here’s a couple of the skylab waste and hygene room:
http://history.nasa.gov/diagrams/sk006.gif
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-400/ch5.htm
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May 31st, 2008 at 2:35 am
Lovely. Just lovely. You’re right that the toilets you see pictures of as representative of the ones in space always look so much nicer than that. I have heard before that the space station does not always smell so good because the air is recycled and the filtration system does not always have the capacity to remove the complete smell of sweat and dirty socks and the toilet facilities and stuff.
Every time I see stuff from the space station it’s so disappointing, because I remember when it was being proposed it was always sold as being all pimped out, modern, streamlined, clean, spacious and all that good stuff and when you see the station it does not look any better than Mir did. It looks like a rigged up thing that is far from the mockups they showed everyone.
it’s so much smaller and crappier than it was supposed to be!
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May 31st, 2008 at 9:06 am
LOL, I wonder if they can just “hang it out the window” and let it “fly”. Wouldn’t that be hilarious.
JJ
http://www.Privacy-center.net
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June 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Fine posted article. ESA and Boeing did’nt on prefunctory search
have much useful data.. The old philosphy was that if an item was mission critical
a backup was mandatory. Ex. the 5 seperate computers on shuttle. The rent on this
Boeing ISS thing kinda high, cant afford no downtime. I’m not sure how this got
so screwed up. There may be a pattern. Ex. deranged us navy testpilot shuttle
crewmember. Maybe she sabatoged the Boeing ISS restroom.
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October 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Heya, just stopped in. Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but fine site.
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April 4th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Wooow, It was a good article. I was trying to write an article about “Space Food” that I found you. Thanks
………….
I am going to translate your article in persian for my website, is it OK?
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April 4th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Shahram said:
Sure go for it! By the way, this post is somewhat old and the problems with the ISS toilet system are now long solved
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