Writer/Mengchen Editor/Chen Dengxin
And to get to the bottom of this matter, we have to start with the previous SpaceX commercial manned space mission.
Four civilians took the “Restoration” Dragon spacecraft to travel in space and played for 3 days.
While having fun, an alarm sounded on the spaceship.
Since there is no gravity, the principle of going to the toilet in space is based onfanSuction is produced to suck out the excrement.
As a result, one of the pipes was not sticky, urine did not enter the storage tank but spilled into the fan. The fan detected a foreign object during operation and issued an alarm.
But fortunately, these golden yellow liquids remained under the floor and had little effect on the people on the spacecraft.
After their Crew Dragon spacecraft landed smoothly, SpaceX conducted a comprehensive inspection of the spacecraft and found that similar problems may also occur on other spacecraft.
Ah, remember the 4 astronauts on the Crew-2 mission? They are still on the International Space Station.
They took the “Endeavour” Dragon spacecraft into space in April. After docking with the space station, the spacecraft has been docked in place.
According to the plan, they will have to take this spacecraft to return to Earth soon, and SpaceX quickly contacted them to check.
Sure enough, the Endeavour toilet also leaked.
Because they usually live in the space station, they haven’t found any problems for so many months.
At first, SpaceX suspected that urine would corrode the aluminum on the spacecraft. After a series of tests on the earth, it was concluded that the coating on the spacecraft material can prevent large-scale chemical reactions and only cause slight corrosion, which is not a big problem.
However, to be on the safe side, the toilet on the spacecraft was still disabled.
But this time it takes more than 20 hours to return to the voyage. You can’t hold it without a toilet, right?
In the end, NASA made the decision to let them come back in diapers.
The four astronauts successfully returned home on November 9th and were finally able to go to the toilet happily under the gravity environment.
The new launch has twists and turns
As soon as the last wave of astronauts returned to Earth (in diapers), the new spacecraft Endurance was launched again.
Why are they so close in time?
It turned out that the launch mission of the Endurance spacecraft was also very unlucky. It was postponed four times because of the weather and the health of the astronauts.
When NASA announced the health problems of the astronauts, it was mysterious, leading netizens to speculate that it might not be the astronaut who diagnosed the new crown.
Several postponements allowed the four astronauts of Crew-2 to stay in space for 20 days longer than the original plan, and the total time was close to 200 days.
Finally, when the weather was fine, SpaceXTwitter happily posted a beautiful picture of the Endurance spacecraft and the moon, Venus and Mars in the same frame.
And just now, the Endurance Dragon spacecraft finally successfully lifted off.
The astronaut in charge of the pilot took over the spacecraft, and no one on the mission played with the toy turtle for the time being.
Of the four astronauts this time, three are from NASA and one is from the European Space Agency.
Their tasks include conducting spacewalks to maintain the space station, conducting scientific experiments such as soilless cultivation and producing optical fibers in a microgravity environment, and staying in the space station for a total of 6 months.
Astronaut one in a million
Among the astronauts of Crew-3, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron were selected by NASA from more than 18,000 people who signed up in 2017.
Raja Chari served as the commander of this mission. Before he became an astronaut, he was a colonel in the Air Force and participated in the Iraq War.
Kayla Barron is a master of nuclear engineering and the first female soldier to serve on naval submarines. In addition, she was selected for NASA’s Artemis program to return to the moon.
The other two astronauts are not small.
With the first two colleagues Thomas Marshburn from NASA, he is a master of physics and a doctor of medicine.
In 2015, he returned to Earth from space. Since he has not yet adapted to the gravitational environment, he habitually let go when explaining life in space, thinking that the pen would float on it.
This is the third time he has been in space, and he served as the pilot in this mission.
The last Matthias Maurer is from the European Space Agency, he is a PhD in materials science, and his position in this mission is a mission expert.
He has participated in sea rescue training with astronauts such as Yang Liwei and Jing Haipeng. In the future, he wants to board China’s space station and is now practicing Chinese.
I just don’t know if any of these 4 people can repair toilets.