Four astronauts are expected to return home on Monday night (8) – early Tuesday (9) in Brazil – aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, ending the six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
The journey began on Monday, just after 2:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm EDT), when the astronauts docked themselves in the Crew Dragon capsule, which has remained tethered to the International Space Station since arriving with the crew on April.
They will spend the rest of the day aboard the capsule as it maneuvers into orbit. The capsule is scheduled to land off the coast of Florida at around 10:30 pm on Monday (0:30 am on Tuesday EDT).
Problems with the bathroom aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule will leave astronauts with no options during the journey home. Instead, the team will have to rely on “underwear” – that is, adult diapers.
SpaceX first discovered a problem with its spacecraft bathroom in September while inspecting a different Crew Dragon capsule. The company found that a tube used to channel urine to a storage tank had come unstuck and was causing a leak hidden under the capsule’s floor.
After discovering this problem, the four astronauts that make up SpaceX’s Crew-2 – NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, European Space Agency’s French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide – were asked to verify the Crew’s capsule Dragon had an issue. And so it was.
During a press conference conducted remotely from the Space Station on Friday, McArthur said that wearing underwear instead of the bathroom is “less than ideal.”
“But we are prepared to deal with this,” he said. “Space flight is full of little challenges. This is just one more that we’ll find and take care of in our mission, so we’re not too worried about it.”
The spacecraft should still be safe to fly, if not a little less comfortable than before.
Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide are returning to Earth before the next crew of astronauts make it to the Station to replace them. NASA and SpaceX hope to launch another ground mission later this week.
The next mission, called Crew-3, was scheduled to take off last weekend, but was delayed — first because of weather problems and then because of a “minor medical problem” with one of the astronauts. NASA said on Thursday that it expects the medical issue to be resolved before takeoff later this week, and SpaceX and NASA officials are now focused on finding a good weather opportunity for the launch.
Monday’s explosion comes after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk lashed out on Twitter, this time making a sexual reference to stalking Oregonian Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Wyden, like many Democratic senators, has advocated closing legal loopholes that allow billionaires like Musk to avoid paying regular taxes.
Wyden tweeted in support of a “Billionaires Income Tax” after Musk polled his Twitter followers asking if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla, which would come with a hefty tax bill. 58% of respondents voted “yes”.
But, it should be noted, Musk has a multi-billion dollar tax bill on stock options coming soon.
(Text translated, read original in English here)
Reference: CNN Brasil
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