More than halfway to the Moon, the Artemis II astronauts are grappling with toilet problems

The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, currently hurtling through space, have had a very quiet journey so far. Very few in-flight issues arise that can disturb their peace of mind.

Except, that’s for the toilet.

The Artemis II crew’s 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter-wide) Orion capsule has a waste management-related problem that arose in the early hours of Saturday as Day 3 was winding down.

“It’s a toilet flushing problem,” Artemis II flight director Judd Freeling told reporters Saturday morning. “And so it appears to me that we have some frozen urine in the vent line.”

The astronauts – NASA’s Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen – were still sleeping at midnight about 200,000 miles (about 320,000 kilometers) from Earth when mission controllers continued to trouble them. And at 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday, early in the 4th day of the flight, mission controllers planned the attack: rotating the capsule to expose the frozen urine to the sun to warm the frozen line. This unclogged the pipe, allowing the waste management system to flush the urine out of the capsule, potentially clearing the system to allow the astronauts to start using the toilet again.

After a short while of trying to get some urine out, mission control said the toilet was “to go” – but “for faecal use only.”

The process of leaking urine out of the capsule was a moment Koch also showed on camera before the mission. Zooming through Orion’s windows urinates like sparkling jewels in the void of space.

The crew also reported a burning smell coming from the bathroom, although mission controllers noted that it was likely the gasket material around the door.

But this isn’t the crew’s first run-in with a toilet problem.

Shortly after launching into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, the crew realized the toilet pump was malfunctioning. Pumps are important and are used for a variety of reasons, including helping to remove waste from the body. In space, there is no gravity to assist such ejection.

There was a relatively straightforward solution to that problem: Crew members weren’t putting in enough water to prime the pump. After they turned that off, the system started working as intended.

The astronauts celebrated that small victory during a virtual interview with news media Thursday.

“I’m proud to call myself a space plumber,” Koch said. “We all breathed a sigh of relief when it was fixed. We initially thought it might be a motor fault.

“Fortunately, we all go to the system,” she said.

‘The most important piece of equipment’

Onboard toilets are perhaps the most beloved spaceflight facility for astronauts who value creature comforts.

“I’d say it’s the most important piece of equipment on board,” Koch added during Thursday’s dispatch from Orion.

After the Orion toilet malfunctions, astronauts are resorting to techniques used by deep space explorers of the mid-20th century.

During the Apollo era, astronauts did not have toilets. They relied only on bags to relieve themselves.

And the process was not always error-free. During the 1969 Apollo 10 mission — in which Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan orbited the moon — Stafford reported back to mission control on day 6 of the mission that a piece of debris was floating in the cabin, according to once-secret government documents.

“Give me a napkin, quick,” Stafford was recorded saying minutes before Cernan added: “Here’s another goddamn turd.”

Astronauts famously hated the bagged-pop approach.

“The fecal bag system was marginally functional and was described as very ‘unpleasant’ by the crew,” an official NASA report from 2007 later revealed. “The bags provided no odor control over the small capsules and the smell was prominent.”

The Orion team is now relying on a similar system formally known as the Collapsible Contingency Urinal or CCU. Astronaut Don Pettit, following along with the mission from home, shared an image on his social media feed.

Legacy of Orion

The Apollo 10 capsule wasn’t the only one plagued with toilet problems. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which targeted its first astronaut mission in 2020 and has since flown more than a dozen, also had several hiccups in its hygiene system.

During a Crew Dragon flight in 2021, for example, SpaceX discovered that a tube used to dump urine into a storage tank became tall, causing a leaky mess under the capsule’s floor. This forced the astronauts to rely on backup undergarments—which are essentially adult diapers.

The current NASA administrator, billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isakman, also commissioned a three-day flight in 2022 on a Crew Dragon, called Inspiration4. During a space flight, he had to solve a toilet problem on board. However, the issue did not involve sewage floating around the cabin, Isaacman told CNN at the time.

Decades of toilet development led to the system aboard Orion being used by the Artemis II astronauts. NASA has put a similar system aboard the International Space Station — which orbits just a couple of hundred miles above Earth — to help test the technology.

Collins Aerospace signed a nearly $30 million contract in 2015 to design and customize a technology known as the Universal Waste Management System, or UWMS, for Orion.

And the system also builds on toilet technology from decades of space shuttle programs. In both systems, urine exits the capsule while solid waste is compacted and returned home with the crew.

When it works, space toilets can have its benefits.

“A friend of mine says he prefers a toilet in space to a toilet on Earth,” former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino told CNN.

However, Massimino is not so sure. “I really miss my toilet on Earth because it’s so involved in space, and you have to be careful and respect your friends so you don’t leave a mess,” he said. “And always clean up after yourself because you don’t want people to get sick.”

NASA’s Artemis program is sending humans into deep space for the first time in more than five decades. Sign up for the countdown newsletter and get updates on out-of-this-world expeditions from CNN Science as they unfold.

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