Astronauts On The ISS Had 9.3 Litres Of "Water" Dumped On Them When Their Toilet Sprung A Leak

A malfunctioning toilet is the worst, especially when it straight up burst and doesn't just clog. And if you think that's bad to deal with at home, imagine it happening way up in space. The cleanup and repair automatically becomes so much more complicated.

Images courtesy: NASA

Unfortunately, that's exactly what the poor astronauts on board the International Space Station had to deal with earlier this month. According to a NASA status report, the station's $19 million cracked and began leaking. As a result about 9.5 litres of water spilled out and into the surroundings, which the crew had to clean up with towels while fixing the leak.

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And we said surroundings there, because spurting water in zero gravity tends to get everywhere.

The toilet they were using was sent to the ISS on board the space shuttle Endeavour back in 2008, after the previous model malfunctioned. You'd expect a $19 million toilet to have a lot of bells and whistles, but that wasn't so. It was essentially like peeing into a hole, because all the money was used to build a filtration and purification system into it.

The astronauts had to sit on essentially a hole the size of a dinner plate to relieve their bowels, or pee into a yellow cone. From there, about 80 to 85 percent of the urine was reclaimed and purified for drinking water. The rest of the waste meanwhile was regularly sealed up and then sent via cargo ship back to Earth, where it would burn up on reentry.

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Fortunately for the poor souls on board the floating metal can, they now have a slightly better toilet. It was recently installed in Node 3, a fairly a module of the ISS that also holds their exercise equipment.

It'll give them a little more privacy while doing their business and, additionally, they can look forward to a new toilet being installed in 2020.