Glow in the night sky. Riddle explained

A mysterious event occurred on September 9 in the night sky: the ubiquitous photographers spotted a strange glow coming from the Space Transport System, better known as the Space Shuttle.





The guesses were as follows: something leaked, the orbital maneuvering system (OMS) caught fire, and the shunting engines (RCS) started to work. Immediately there were photos on many well-known resources space.com, weatherspace.com. Naturally, many questions arose (in particular, I have). From where Why? Crash?

The truth, as always, is much more prosaic: the visible trace is nothing but the dumping of "dirty water", or simply the astronauts' urine. It turned out to be so bright because of the large amount (about 68 kg) of the substance indicated. Since during 10 days, while the shuttle was located near the station, he (by the rules) could not reset. So we all observed a fairly common occurrence, a NASA spokesman said. Getting into space, the ejected water freezes into a cloud of the smallest crystals and subsequently evaporates under the influence of sunlight and disperses in space