Brain Surgery, Fixing the Space Station's Toilet and Orbital Cremation

By Nancy Atkinson - March 27, 2012 at 4:46 PM UTC | Space Exploration

"As you can imagine, all works comes to a stop on the Space Station when the toilet breaks," said astronaut Don Pettit, known as Mr. Fixit among the astronaut corps. In this latest edition of "Inside the International Space Station," Expedition 30 astronauts Dan Burbank and Don Pettit discuss their glamorous life in space of having to fix the toilet, upgrade their computers, and take out the garbage. This sounds just like living on Earth, but there are a few orbital twists for doing those things in space. And of course Pettit nails it with his vivid descriptions.

It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com