In space, nobody can hear you crossing your legs.

The toilet systems on the International Space Station have been playing up for the last few days with the waste/gas seperator pump of the liquid waste handler failing to function. The toilet system is a Russian design built into the Zvezda core module. I’m unsure as to whether this toilet is a descendant of those fitted to the last century’s Salyut design of which Zvezda is a variant (DOS-8)

Seemingly the cosmonauts and astronaut could go for a “number 2″ on the ISS loo but would have to refrain from a “number 1″.

In the mean time, the Soyuz capsule systems have been used but they only have enough capacity for a few days use. The ultimate fallback would probably be the Apollo-era tried and tested ’sealy-bag’ method.

A NASA engineer is reported to be flying from Russia at the moment with a 16kg replacement pump in his hand luggage. On arrival at Kennedy Space Center, this pump will be taken directly to Space Shuttle Discovery which is already on the pad in preparation for lift-on on STS-124 to the ISS on Saturday.

In the mean time, unconfirmed reports suggest that curry may be off the menu.

International Space Station Expedition 16 have experienced high deceleration forces during the re-entry of their Soyuz TMA-11 flight.

The Soyuz spacecraft was either commanded or automatically entered into a ballistic re-entry due to anomalous data from it’s guidance systems. A ballistic trajectory is considerably steeper than a normal trajectory and causes the aerodynamic braking to increase much faster than during a shallow re-entry. It’s probably testament to the design of the Soyuz that it can withstand such a manouver.

CDR Peggy Whitson, FE1 Yuri Malenchenko and Spaceflight Participant Yi So-yeon experienced up to 10Gs of sustained deceleration to ultimately land about 295 miles off their original target in the Khazakh Steppes . Due to the distance involved, recovery forces took 45 minutes to reach the capsule. The crew were given medical examinations on site.

My understanding is that the ballistic re-entry profile is a fail-safe mode where the full guidance system cannot be relied on to execute the shallow re-entry profile correctly. I would guess that the ballistic profile is initiated by a relatively straight forward extended burn by the motor on the PAO to reduce orbital velocity and create a ballistic descent.