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NASA\u2019s historic Artemis 2 mission launched without a hitch last week, sending the first astronauts toward the Moon since 1972 \u2014 but their journey hasn\u2019t been without hiccups.<\/p>\n
Their space toilet, in particular \u2014 the space agency\u2019s newfangled Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) \u2014 has turned out to be a considerable pain point.<\/p>\n
Mere hours into their ten-day trip around the Moon, the toilet jammed<\/a>, with NASA officials delivering the crew an unfortunate piece of news: it was only accepting solid waste.<\/p>\n While the issue was ultimately corrected when NASA astronaut Christina Koch realized the pump hadn\u2019t been primed with enough liquid, the interplanetary commode broke down once again over the weekend.<\/p>\n This time, \u201cit\u2019s an issue with dumping the waste out of the toilet,\u201d as flight director Judd Frieling told reporters on Saturday, as quoted by CNN<\/a>. \u201cAnd so it appears to me that we probably have some frozen urine in the vent line.\u201d<\/p>\n And in the midst of it all, yet another issue with the toilet manifested itself in a way that\u2019s particularly alarming in the closed confines of a spacecraft.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it was some sort of burning odor, and then it was definitely in the hygiene bay,\u201d Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen told reporters<\/a> late Friday. \u201cAnd when I opened up the hygiene bay, the rest of the crew could smell it pretty much immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n The odor was like \u201cwhen you turn on a heater that\u2019s been sitting for a while and\u2026 you smell that burnt smell that comes from that,\u201d Hansen explained. \u201cAnd I do think it smells similar to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Ground control suspects the odor was caused by insulation around the door of the toilet heating up.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s space toilet is, at least potentially, a substantial upgrade over the chaotic free-for-all during the Apollo missions, which saw astronauts pooping into bags unassisted, which in one gross situation even led to pieces of fecal matter floating through their capsule<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a glamorous part of exploring space. The UWMS is designed to vent urine into the icy vacuum while a toilet seat and pump deposits fecal matter into a bag liner to be collected and brought back to Earth, closely resembling the one found on board the International Space Station.<\/p>\n NASA had planned for the possibility that the toilet could break down en route. For instance, the Collapsable Contingency Urinal (CCU), a long and slender device with a nozzle at one end, as seen in an image shared by NASA astronaut Donald Pettit<\/a>, is designed to suck up urine, replacing the \u201cneed for about 25 pounds of diapers,\u201d according to Pettit.<\/p>\n While the crew slept after identifying the frozen urine line, mission controllers pored over the broken down toilet and settled on a plan of attack by Saturday afternoon: the crew\u2019s entire Orion capsule would rotate to expose the crystallized pee to the warming rays of the Sun to unclog it.<\/p>\n The plan worked, but only well enough to be \u201cgo\u201d for \u201cfecal use only,\u201d according to Frieling.<\/p>\n Many hours later, ground control once again gave the crew the go ahead \u201cfor all types of use of the toilet,\u201d according to capsule communicator Jacki Mahaffey.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the crew rejoices!\u201d Koch replied.<\/p>\n More on the space toilet: NASA Spacecraft\u2019s Toilet Fails Hours Into Ten-Day Journey to Moon<\/a><\/p>\n \t