Crews working Water Purification System issue

Ten person Crew aboard station holds news conference

SLN: Up to the Minute, I'm Charles Atkeison. A new water purification system brought up to the international space station by Endeavour is not operating as it should, and the flight control teams are working the issue along with the station's crew.

The Water Purification System, a two section system, has a bad centrifuge motor which is moving to slow for the system to start up properly. The WPS is built to turn crew urine into clean drinking water as NASA and her international partners expand crew size durations this May from three to six.

According to mission management, Endeavour's crew are scheduled to have the system working prior to undocking next week, and bring home a few samples for testing here on earth. Undocking is planned for Thanksgiving afternoon EST, however as SLN.com continues to report, a one day extension is very likely. The extra day should be announced by this Tuesday to assist in the WPS issue.

Meanwhile, spacewalking crew members Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen will sleep tonight in the space station’s Quest Airlock as they beging their normal prebreathe of pure oxygen to purge the nitrogen out of their bodies. The airlock's pressure will be lowered from 14.7 PSI to 10.2.

The third spacewalk of Endeavour's docked mission to the space station is scheduled for 1:45 pm tomorrow, and will likely start earlier as has the last two "walks" which began ahead of the timeline.

And today, Endeavour boosted the space station's orbit by one mile to assist with the Russian Progress supply vehicle's docking in one week.
At a MET+ 6 days, 22 hours into the mission of Endeavour, this is spacelaunchnews.com.