The time when SpaceX crew had to depend on ‘diapers’ due to toilet leak
ByHT News Desk
Mar 18, 2025 09:27 PM IST
NASA at the time said that the four astronauts, of the 2021 mission, had to depend on absorbent “undergarments” for their 20-hour return journey.
As NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are set to return to Earth on SpaceX's ‘Dragon’ capsule, the belated journey brings back memories from three years ago, when a crew leaving the International Space Station had to use diapers due to a broken toilet on their capsule belonging to Elon Musk's company.
Astronauts Thomas Pesquet, Megan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough, and Aki Hoshide (L-R) returned to Earth on November 8, 2021 on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.(NASA)
Astronauts Thomas Pesquet, Megan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough, and Aki Hoshide (L-R) returned to Earth on November 8, 2021 on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.(NASA)
Four NASA astronauts had to spend 20 hours in the SpaceX capsule on their return journey, right from the time of undocking to that of their splashdown.
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Megan McArthur, one of the four astronauts belonging to the American space agency, had back in 2021 described the situation as "suboptimal" but manageable, a report from The Associated Press had said.
She said that a spaceflight is full of little challenges, saying that the broken toilet was one such issue which the crew will take care of. "So we are not too worried about it," she had said.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will return home after having been stuck in space for more than nine months. They had travelled to the space station in June last year on Boeing Starliner's maiden crewed flight. Owing to helium leak and propulsion issues, the spacecraft was deemed unfit for the duo's return, turning their days-long stay into a months-long one.
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NASA earlier on Tuesday shared an update on their return and said that the SpaceX Crew-9 mission had successfully undocked from the International Space Station, undertaking its return journey to Earth.
SpaceX mission from 2021
Back in November 2021, present along with NASA's Megan McArthur was French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who told reporters that the past six months had been intense. All the four astronauts had conducted a series of spacewalks to upgrade the space station's power grid and experienced thruster firings by docked Russian vehicles that even sent the ISS on brief spins.
They also hosted a private Russian film crew, which was a first for the space station.
Standing out in the list of issues was the toilet leak, with astronauts having to pull up panels in their capsule only to find pools of urine.
The issue was noticed first during SpaceX's private flight in September 2021, when a tube separated and spilled urine under the floorboards. Reportedly, the space company had fixed the toilet on the capsule which was awaiting lift off. But, they said that the toilet in orbit was unusable.
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However, engineers had said that the toilet leak had not structurally compromised the capsule, deeming it safe for the astronauts' return journey. NASA had said that the crew was going to have to depend on absorbent "undergarments".
The SpaceX capsule, carrying NASA astronauts Megan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, had been launched to the space station on April 23, 2021. Their capsule was certified for a maximum of 210 days in space.
Additionally, the crew had grown the first chilli peppers in space, which McArthur had described as a "nice moral boost" amid the slew of challenges. She had said that the peppers had a "nice spiciness to them, little bit of lingering burn".
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