The newest element of the International Space Station arrived and was installed by Astronauts, and then their attention turned to repairing the station’s single toilet.
The Japanese pressurized laboratory was installed using the robotic Canada arm Dextre, allowing the operating and living space on the International space station to be suitably enlarged.
Because the lab is pressurized, it now is the largest room present on the International Space Station. It was installed on Tuesday evening and is as large as a good-sized bus, and cost $1 billion dollars.
The new laboratory is 11.3 metres in length and weighs over 14,500 kilograms. It is part of the Kibo Laboratory that has three parts to be eventually installed aboard the ISS station.
The first element was a small section, no larger than a storage closet, and was installed successfully in March. The newest addition is part two, with a third part of the Kibo lab to be installed on the ISS in 2009.
ISS Astronaut Oleg Kononenko was given the job of installing a new pump to fix the US $19 million dollar toilet that has been broken for a week.
The pump repairs the area responsible for collecting urine in the weightless atmosphere, and containing it. For the last week the toilet on board the Soyuz return capsule had been serving the needs of the ISS crew.