Plumbing job in space - Toliet Repair Update

From CNN.com - Science & Space:

Residents aboard the international space station were getting ready to take on a new task Wednesday: plumbing. The space station's toilet broke two weeks ago. The problem -- confined to the urine side of the commode -- has forced the orbiting outpost's crew of an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to flush manually with extra water several times a day. Space shuttle Discovery brought up a new pump for the testy toilet, as well as the space station's newest room, a $1 billion Japanese lab. The mundane task of installing the 35-pound pump and hoses was to fall to Oleg Kononenko, one of the two Russians, on Wednesday morning. The job was expected to last two hours. "We'll see (Wednesday) afternoon if that does the trick or if we need to figure out another solution," said Emily Nelson, a space station flight director. In addition to fixing the toilet, the shuttle and space station crews planned to make power, data, air and water connections on the newly installed lab, named Kibo, which means hope in Japanese. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide installed the 37-foot lab on Tuesday, just as two crewmates were completing a spacewalk. He used the space station's robot arm to nudge the bus-sized lab into place.

Read the whole article