More than half way to the moon, the Artemis II astronauts are grappling with a toilet problem
All four astronauts Artemis II mission The robots currently hurtling through space have had a largely silent journey so far. Few problems arose during the flight that could disturb their peace of mind.
Except for the toilet.
The Artemis II crew’s 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter-wide) Orion capsule has a waste management issue that became apparent early Saturday as Day 3 drew to a close.
“This is an issue with flushing waste down the toilet,” Artemis II Flight Director Judd Frieling told reporters Saturday morning. “And it seems to me there’s probably frozen urine in the vent line.”
astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were still fast asleep at mid-morning, about 200,000 miles (about 320,000 kilometers) from Earth, as mission controllers continued to troubleshoot the problem. And at 3:30 pm on Saturday, early in the 4th day of the flight, mission controllers had a plan of attack: warm up the frozen line by rotating the capsule to place the frozen urine in the sun. This unblocked the pipe, allowing the waste management system to flush urine out of the capsule, potentially clearing the system and allowing the astronauts to begin using the toilet again.
Shortly after the attempt to expel some of the urine, mission control said the toilet was “gone” but was “for defecation purposes only.”
The process of expelling urine from the capsule was a moment that Koch also demonstrated on camera early in the mission. Pee flows like sparkling jewels in outer space as it approaches Orion’s windows.
The crew also reported a burning smell coming from the bathroom, but mission controllers noted that it was probably just the seal material around the door.
But this isn’t the first time the crew has encountered toilet problems.
Shortly after launching into orbit from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, the crew noticed the toilet plunger was not working. Pumps are important and used for a variety of reasons, including helping withdraw waste from the body. There is no gravity in space to assist such expulsions.
There was a relatively simple solution to this problem: The crew members had not put in enough water to prime the pump. Once these were completed, the system started working as intended.
The astronauts celebrated this small victory during a virtual interview with news media on Thursday.
“I’m proud to call myself a space plumber,” Koch said. “We were all breathing a sigh of relief when everything turned out to be OK. We initially thought it could potentially be something that broke the engine.”
“Fortunately, we are all in a system,” he said.
The Artemis II astronauts’ toilet separates urine for release into space and stores feces for disposal upon return to Earth. The crew received training on how to use the system using this model at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. – Canadian Space Agency)
‘The most important equipment’
The onboard toilet is perhaps the spaceflight comfort most valued by astronauts who value creature comforts.
“I would like to say that this is probably the most important piece of equipment on the ship,” Koch added in a post from Orion on Thursday.
When the Orion toilet malfunctions, astronauts resort to a technique used by deep space explorers in the mid-20th century.
During the Apollo era, astronauts did not have toilets. They relied solely on bags to meet their needs.
And the process wasn’t always foolproof. During the 1969 Apollo 10 mission (the mission in which Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan circumnavigated the moon), Stafford reported to mission control on day 6 of the mission that a piece of debris was floating in the cabin. once secret government documents.
“Hand me a quick napkin,” Stafford said. recorded Cernan says moments before noticing more: “Here’s another fucking asshole.”
Astronauts are known to hate the poop-in-a-bag approach.
“The faecal bag system was marginally functional and was described by the crew as very ‘unpleasant’,” he said. official NASA report It appeared later, from 2007. “The bags did not provide odor control in the small capsule and the odor was noticeable.”
The Orion crew currently relies on a similar system, officially called the Collapsible Emergency Urinal, or CCU. Astronaut Don Pettit, who was following the mission from his home, shared a photo on his social media stream.
Orion’s legacy
The Apollo 10 capsule wasn’t the only capsule to experience toilet problems. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which performed its first astronaut mission in 2020 and has made more than a dozen flights since then, also experienced some disruptions in its hygiene system.
For example, during a Crew Dragon flight in 2021, SpaceX found that a tube used to drain urine into the storage tank had come undone, causing a leaking mess under the base of the capsule. This forced astronauts to rely on spare underwear, which were actually adult diapers.
Current NASA administrator, billionaire technology entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, also commissioned a three-day flight called Inspiration4 on Crew Dragon in 2022. During the space flight, he had to solve the problem of toilets on board. But at the time, Isaacman told CNN that the problem wasn’t related to unruly waste floating around the cabin.
Decades of toilet development informed the system aboard the Orion spacecraft used by Artemis II astronauts. To help study the technology, NASA has deployed a similar system to the International Space Station, orbiting just a few hundred miles above Earth.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch reads a book on a tablet aboard the Orion crew capsule on Friday while astronaut Jeremy Hansen (center right) looks out one of Orion’s windows. -NASA
Collins Aerospace has a contract worth approximately $30 million. Signed in 2015Designing and adapting the technology known as the Universal Waste Management System, or UWMS, for Orion.
The system is also based on decades-old toilet technology from the Space Shuttle program. In both systems, urine is removed from the capsule, while solid waste is compressed and returned home with the team.
When it works, an in-space toilet can have its advantages.
“One of my friends even said he preferred the toilet in space to the toilet on Earth,” former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino told CNN.
But Massimino isn’t so sure. “I really miss my toilet on Earth because it’s so space related and you have to be careful and respect your friends so you don’t make a mess,” he said. “And always clean up after yourself because you don’t want people to get sick.”
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