Nation in brief: Mars lander back on track

NASA couldn’t send commands to the Phoenix Mars Lander for most of Tuesday because of a radio glitch, delaying a second day of activities, officials said.

The minor problem was fixed later in the day and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter resumed relaying the lander’s images of the Martian landscape back to Earth, said NASA officials.

Phoenix, the latest spacecraft on Mars, communicates with scientists through two NASA orbiters circling the planet.

The Reconnaissance Orbiter earlier had turned its radio off, possibly because of a cosmic ray, said Fuk Li, manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Li said the orbiter was programmed to respond as it did.

“All this is a one-day hiccup in being able to move the arm around, so it’s no big deal,” said Ed Sedivy, Phoenix program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.

JARRATT, Va.

Man executed in store killing

A man whose lawyers claimed he was mentally disabled has been executed for killing a convenience store owner in Virginia.

Kevin Green was pronounced dead Tuesday at 10:05 p.m. EDT in the first execution in Virginia in nearly two years. The 31-year-old’s execution by injection is also the third in the U.S. since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in April.

Green was convicted of the 1998 killing of Patricia Vaughan.

Washington

Space station’s toilet breaks

The International Space Station’s lone toilet is broken, leaving the crew with almost nowhere to go. So NASA may order an in-orbit plumbing service call when space shuttle Discovery visits next week.

Until then, the three-man crew will have to make do with a jury-rigged system when they need to urinate.

While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to NASA. Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off. Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally. Russian officials don’t know the cause of the problem and the crew has been unable to fix it.

The crew has used the toilet on the Soyuz return capsule, but it has a limited capacity. They are now are using a back-up bag-like collection system that can be connected to the broken toilet, according to NASA public affairs officials.

Discovery is already set for launch Saturday with a planned docking with the space station on Monday. Cloutier said NASA officials are considering having some parts flown to Cape Canaveral and placed in the shuttle during its countdown.