\u201cThey’re trying to live and learn,” Glaze said.<\/p>\n
‘A complex engineering issue’<\/p>\n
The UWMS, which <\/a>is located inside a small closet on the floor of the Orion capsule, differs in a few ways <\/a>from a regular toilet owing to the lack of gravity.\u00a0For instance, fecal matter is sucked down into a bag that\u2019s sealed and then stored under the floor of the toilet.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, for urine, each astronaut has their own hose that uses some airflow to pull the liquid into storage.\u00a0The urine is vented several times a day into space, in an impressive frozen stream. Mission control referred to it as a “blizzard” during one particular venting.<\/a><\/p>\n Those aren’t stars streaking by the window in this screenshot from aboard Artemis II. The crew vented some wastewater and it flew by in what mission control described as a blizzard. (NASA)<\/p>\n But only a couple days in for Artemis II, the lines to vent the urine were getting clogged and frozen. The solution ended up being a rotation of the Orion capsule so that sunlight could hit the vents \u2014 melting the frozen wastewater.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s kind of a complex engineering issue when you expose a liquid to a vacuum. It’s a pretty chaotic environment,\u201d said Rick Henfling, Artemis II\u2019s entry flight director, during a media briefing.<\/p>\n The hygiene bay mystery<\/p>\n Meanwhile, inside the capsule, the crew noticed a strange smell emanating from their \u201cbathroom.”<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it was some sort of burning odour,\u201d reported mission specialist and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen during a chat with mission control.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was definitely in the hygiene bay. And when I opened up the hygiene bay, the rest of the crew could smell it pretty much immediately,” he said.<\/p>\n When NASA looked into it, they ruled out the heaters near the hygiene bay and the use of the toilet itself. They determined it wasn’t dangerous and, eventually, at the April 8 news briefing<\/a>, Orion deputy program manager Debbie Korth said that no further reports of the smell had come up.<\/p>\n Astronaut and mission specialist Christina Koch looks at the Universal Waste Management System. (NASA)<\/p>\n Urinating still a tricky business<\/p>\n From that point, things seemed to be working well until the venting problem reared its head again.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just want to let you know that right now, [the] toilet is no-go for use,\u201d said Jenni Gibbons, delivering the bad news to the crew from Houston on Day 5.<\/p>\n The backup plan for the crew is Collapsible Contingency Urinals, which are essentially long tubes that astronauts use to store urine that can also be vented, provided that system is working. While this may seem uncomfortable, note that Apollo astronauts had to use fecal bags<\/a>\u00a0that they inserted a germicide into.<\/p>\n Mission control’s theory about what went wrong this time were processes to prevent bacterial structures from forming in the lines.<\/p>\n Rick Henfling, Artemis II flight entry director, has had to answer a few questions over the week about the wastewater venting problems. (Ronaldo Schemidt \/ AFP \/ Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Those](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9d9acabfe53c521a820b7f2e086bcafb.jpeg\"\/)
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