SpaceX Will Fix Toilet Leak in Dragon Capsule Ahead of Weekend Launch

The company and NASA want to make sure that any toilet leaks won’t compromise a capsule launching early Sunday from Kennedy Space Center or any others parked on the International Space Station since April.

During SpaceX’s first private flight last month, a tube came unstuck, spilling urine onto fans and under the floor, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who used to work for NASA. The same problem was recently discovered inside the Dragon capsule on the space station, he told reporters Monday night.

As a permanent improvement, SpaceX has welded on the urine-flushing tube that is inside the company’s latest capsule, named Endurance by its US-German crew. NASA isn’t completely finished reviewing last-minute fixes.

NASA astronaut Raja Chari, the spacecraft commander, said Tuesday he has “absolute confidence” in the repairs. SpaceX quickly jumped on the issue, he said, with hundreds of people working on it to ensure the safety of the crew.

Gerstenmaier said that for the Dragon capsule in orbit, less urine accumulated under the floor panels than for the one that carried a billionaire and three others on a three-day flight. That’s because the NASA-led crew spent only a day in it before arriving at the space station.

Gerstenmaier said SpaceX is conducting tests to make sure that spilled liquid during the past six months has not weakened the orbiting capsule. Any structural damage could put astronauts at risk during their flight back to Earth next month. He said the final test should be completed by the end of this week.

This will be SpaceX’s fourth launch of NASA astronauts and its fifth passenger flight overall. Following the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA replaced SpaceX and Boeing for transportation to and from the space station. American astronauts rode on Russian rockets until SpaceX took over last year.

Boeing hasn’t launched any yet. A re-test flight of its Starliner capsule without a crew is put on hold until next year due to a valve failure.

German astronaut Mathias Maurer will become the 600th person in space once he launches SpaceX’s Falcon rocket, according to NASA data. He said at a news conference on Tuesday that he offered the designation to US crew mate Kayla Barron, who would be the 601st.

“He and I together would be like Number 600,” Maurer said. “I was lucky to get the round number, but we’ll all have fun in space,” Maurer said.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.