10 liters of water were flushed out of the space station's toilets and astronauts had to dry with towels

DPA / Europa Press Agency

More than 10 liters of water fled toilets Friday in the US segment of the International Space Station (ISS), according to a Russian space source cited by sputniknews.

Apparently, the crew had to collect water that was spread all over the segment with towels.

"Our colleagues at the Tranquility node had an incident on Friday, the astronauts separated the water supply line and the fluid escaped, and more than 10 liters of water flowed before the problem was solved." water using towels, "said the source.

Tranquility, also known as Node 3, is an element added to the International Space Station (ISS). It was built under the direction of ESA and the Italian Space Agency by Thales Alenia Space for NASA and has become the property of NASA, which is responsible for its use.

He was taken to the ISS during the STS-130 mission in February 2010. On this knot is the WHC (waste and hygiene compartment), where is the toilet that recorded the failure.

The leak occurs several months after the ISS team detected a minor air leak caused by a microfracture in the wall of the Soyuz MS-09 orbital module. The hole was plugged by the crew the same day and the Russian space company Roscosmos created a special commission to investigate this incident.

On December 11, Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS, Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev, made an exit into space to examine the hole in the probe, which was found at the end of the month of # 39; August.

The cosmonauts cut three pieces of micrometeoroidal protection to take samples of the mastic and the surface surrounding the microfracture. The samples were delivered to Earth, where they should be delivered to researchers to determine the causes of the hole in the Soyuz MS-09 probe.