With the Saturday launch of the shuttle Discovery already underway, a NASA employee is rushing back from Russia with a special pump to fix a malfunctioning toilet on the International Space Station.
The space station's Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection and not solid waste.
A NASA employee was en route to Florida from Russia with the 1 1/2-foot-long (45-centimeter-long) pump and related hardware, which was packed in a diplomatic pouch and carried onto the commercial jetliner as 35 pounds (16 kilograms) of hand luggage.
To make room for the pump inside Discovery's crammed cabin, NASA was going to pull out some wrenches, a spare part for the space station's oxygen generator, and a microbe-killing device for use in the European space lab.
"Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us, so some of these things that we didn't need for the next six months or so could wait," said payload manager Scott Higginbotham.
NASA is also squeezing in a Disney action figure, Buzz Lightyear. The toy popularized by the 1995 movie "Toy Story" will spend several months at the space station as part of an educational program for math and science teachers and their students.
Meanwhile, the main cargo on Discovery is Japan's Kibo lab, a 37-footer (11-meter-long module) that's as big as a school bus. Kibo means "hope" in Japanese.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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