Apart from remodelling their home, astronauts on board the International Space Station are installing a new piece of equipment that may save their lives one day. Or embarrass them. It can go either way: Containing 32 sensors in a device the size of a shoebox, the ENose--or electronic nose--will be able to detect even the most subtle inorganic and organic smells. Like Carl Walz, ISS astronaut and Director for NASA's Advanced Capabilities puts it, "having experienced an air-quality event during my Expedition 4 mission on the space station, I wish I had the information that this ENose will provide future crews." Yes Carl. Air-quality events are bad.

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A NASA astronaut lost her bag of tools outside the International Space Station earlier today when she went outside to clean up a solar panel. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's grease gun exploded all over her helmet camera and gloves, and while wiping off the mess, she shifted her attention off the tool bag. She lost her grip and it floated away. "Oh, great," she was reported to mumble.

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A much-needed second toilet is on its way to the International Space Station, but that's not all, not nearly. NASA is gifting the crew with a new waste recycling system, which will be able to reclaim 'used' water. In other words, it will process astronauts' urine and return it to the station's water supply to, as one of the current inhabitants of the stations cheerily put it, "take yesterday's coffee and make it into today's coffee."

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They may be rocket scientists and spend years training for things going awry in the void of space, but NASA has revealed that astronauts in the International Space Station will face the biggest, most dangerous challenge humans have ever encountered through thousand of years of history: Home remodeling. Next weekend, the ISS will get the necessary materials to do an extreme makeover in the living area of the ISS, adding new quarters, urine recycling systems, a "state of the art" space gym, and the first kitchen fridge ever:

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It's too bad Gary Gygax is no longer with us, because it would be interesting to get his opinion on SPHERES (for Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites). These prototype devices are currently floating around aboard the ISS as part of an experiment developed by MIT students. The goal is to test flight formations that could one day lead to autonomous maintenance satellites capable of building large spacecraft while in orbit.

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Jettisoned over a year ago and expected to reenter the Earth's atmosphere on its own time somewhere in the beginning of November, one of the ISS's retired coolant tanks has careened through the Earth's atmosphere in the skies off the coast of Australia. Two lucky things happened here: the reentry took place — and this was completely up to chance — over water, and the atmosphere broke the 635kg tank into lots of small pieces.

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You might want to stay inside today, folks, because there's some space junk the size of a Buick set to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land, well, somewhere later today. After the spectacular disintegration of the Jules Verne earlier this year, this is the second time our earthbound space agencies have purposefully burned something up in the atmosphere. The trouble is, the Verne was carefully controlled and tracked by two planes (hence, the spectacular video). When this puppy breaks up in the atmo, at least 15 chunks of ammonia-soaked metal and other space station goodness are going to reach the surface. "If anybody found a piece of anything on the ground Monday morning, I would hope they wouldn't get too close to it," said a NASA spokesman.

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We've traced Garriott's dream journey to space from his eight months of training in Russia's Star City to his climactic orbital toilet repair endeavors just last week, but at 7:34 Moscow Time (10:34 EST) our favourite space tourist's trip came to its inevitable end. Garriott is now safely on the ground in Kazakhstan after just ten days in space, most of which he spent on the ISS, floatin' around with some cosmonauts. He hasn't had a chance to talk about his experience yet, but what is there to say? "Ha ha, I went into space, losers!" wouldn't be the classiest reintroduction to Earth, but it would sum things up quite nicely. [Yahoo News]

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The Soyuz TMA-13, carrying computer game rich guy, son of an astronaut, and current space tourist Richard Garriott has successfully docked with the International Space Station as of 8:26 GMT (3:26 EST). The three-man crew just finished floating around in orbit for a few days, and are now commencing their scheduled missions. For the two astronauts, that means spending six months building new life support equipment for future crews; for Garriott, that means ten days of floating around, giggling and getting sick on piles of freeze-dried Neapolitan ice cream.

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Computer game millionaire Richard Garriott is now in orbit. At about 3 a.m., the current luckiest geek in the world blasted off in a Soyuz TMA-13 capsule alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov. The three will circle the Earth a few times before docking with the International Space Station on Tuesday. At that time, Garriott will conduct a series of experiments that will probably not include level grinding in his sci-fi MMORPG, Tabula Rasa. One thing Garriott and company may not be able to do when they reach the ISS? Go to the bathroom. Update: Now with video:

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