When you live in a $100 billion home, you expect the lavatory to work at least. So when astronauts living aboard the International Space Station called for a plumber, no one balked at the call-out fee of $450 million (£230 million).

With the patience of the three-man crew going down the pan after their lavatory broke down, forcing them to team up in pairs to operate the disposal pump manually, Nasa and its Russian equivalent, Roskosmos, launched an international effort to bring relief.

Spare parts were rushed from Moscow to Florida — in a diplomatic bag to exempt them from Customs delays — in time to launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery, while other important cargo was stripped out at the last minute to make room.

Last night, after a two-hour repair operation, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko relayed a message to ground controllers in Russia and the US that he had finally solved the problem. “The service module toilet is back in business,” a Nasa official announced.

The plumbing work eclipsed a more historic triumph yesterday, on which Nasa officials had hoped that the world's eyes would be fixed; the opening of a $1billion Japanese laboratory module aboard the space station.

“It's unfortunate we are talking about toilets but that's really life, the future of humans living in space ... it's perhaps something that everyday people can relate to,” said Kirk Shireman, Nasa's deputy space station programme manager.

The implications of a breakdown were potentially serious. The station is considered an important logistical testing ground for future voyages to Mars — a round trip that will take three years and for which the prospect of a broken lavatory carries added trauma.

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