SpaceX astronauts are rocking diapers on a trip back to Earth after a toilet on the company’s Dragon capsule broke in advance of their journey from the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Megan McArthur said on Friday that she and her three crew mates will be taking the 20-hour trip home Sunday in “suboptimal” conditions that they’ll make work.
“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges,” she said. “This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission. So we’re not too worried about it.”
The toilet leak was first noted in September, the Associated Press reports, when an unglued tube spilled urine beneath the floorboards of SpaceX. A capsule awaiting liftoff was fixed, while another capsule’s toilet was determined to be unusable. While engineers say it is safe for the trip home, with urine not having an impact, NASA will have them wearing absorbent “undergarments.”
The astronauts also grew the first chili peppers in space, which McArthur called “a nice moral boost,” which they got to sample in tacos.
“They have a nice spiciness to them, a little bit of a lingering burn,” she said. “Some found that more troublesome than others.”
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshides will be coming back home with McArthur. Their replacements are reportedly being sent up Wednesday night.
