NASA astronauts on a nearly 10-day journey around the moon and back have reason to celebrate, and not just because their launch went so well: their toilet is now working.<\/p>\n
The so-called lunar loo malfunctioned as soon as the Artemis II crew reached orbit on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Mission Control guided astronaut Christina Koch through some plumbing tricks and she finally got it going.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.<\/p>\n
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bad news is that it is so cold inside the Orion capsule – 18C – that the four astronauts are digging into suitcases for long-sleeved clothes.<\/p>\n Mission Control is trying to warm things up.<\/p>\n The three US astronauts and one Canadian have now completed their exit from Earth\u2019s orbit and are now on track for their lunar fly-around.<\/p>\n It will be Mission Control\u2019s first trans-lunar injection since Apollo\u2019s swan song in 1972.<\/p>\n Until then, the astronauts are savouring the views of earth from tens of thousands of kilometres high.<\/p>\n Koch told Mission Control that they can make out the entire coastlines of continents and even the South Pole, her old stomping ground.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is just absolutely phenomenal,\u201d radioed Koch, who spent a year at an Antarctic research station before joining NASA.<\/p>\n The mission is due to end with a Pacific splashdown on April 10.<\/p>\n NASA is counting on the test flight to kickstart the entire Artemis program and lead to a moon landing by two astronauts in 2028.<\/p>\n Orion\u2019s toilet may need some design tweaks before that happens.<\/p>\n Located in the floor with a door and curtain for privacy, the capsule\u2019s lone toilet is based on an experimental commode that launched to the International Space Station in 2020.<\/p>\n That station potty barely saw any use and has been out of order for years.<\/p>\n Known as the universal waste management system, the compact toilet uses air suction instead of water and gravity to remove waste, similar to earlier space toilets.<\/p>\n It is also designed to better accommodate female astronauts.<\/p>\n Koch and her crewmates had to resort to a bag and funnel system for urinating until she got the toilet working overnight.<\/p>\n Any toilet – even a fitful one – is better than none if you ask any of the six surviving Apollo astronauts.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Apollo capsules were too small to accommodate a commode, so the all-male crews relied on bags to relieve themselves throughout the lunar journey.<\/p>\n These so-called Apollo bags were repurposed during NASA\u2019s later space shuttle flights; they served as backup whenever the shuttle toilet acted up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA astronauts on a nearly 10-day journey around the moon and back have reason to celebrate, and not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285,1720],"class_list":{"0":"post-582233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}