Raising water bags on the station were Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, flight engineer Koichi Wakata of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt.Wakata cleared a stuck system valve Tuesday and made final hook-ups today while engineers on the ground determined the water -- which had had low levels of bacteria -- is safe to drink and gave the crew a "go" for the first toast.
Joining them on the ground were engineers at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. -- members of the team that designed and developed the water reclamation system.
"This is something that's been the stuff of science fiction. Everybody has talked about recycling water in a closed loop system for many years, but nobody has ever done it before," Barratt said.
"So here we are today with the first round of recycled and we have these highly attractive labels on our water bags that essentially say...'drink this when real water is more than 200 miles away,'" he said. "And we're just really really happy for this day and the team that put this together."
The water reclamation system was delivered by a shuttle crew last November, and station crews ran in to a series of troublesome start-up problems. First a Urine Distillation Assembly failed to work properly, and a replacement then had to be delivered by a shuttle crew in March.Water sample tests showed low levels of bacteria initially but NASA flight surgeons and other project scientists say the level is so minute that it would pose no problem for resident station crews.
The start-up of the system is considered critical to plans to double the size of current three-person crews -- a huge milestone in terms of boosting the amount of research done at the outpost.
A crew of three is to be launched to the station next week, expanding to six the number of astronauts and cosmonauts working on the outpost.
No comments:
Post a Comment