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The Artemis II moon mission crew includes (left to right): NASA astronaut and Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman (seated), Pilot Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut and Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen. Image credit: NASA<\/p>\n
Collins Aerospace developed different versions of the UWMS for the Orion capsule. Artemis I was an uncrewed flight, and its Orion capsule did not carry the space toilet. The UWMS in the Orion capsule is based on a similar design installed in the ISS a few years ago. The toilet portion of the UWMS has separate paths for liquid and solid wastes. The solid waste is collected, packed in canisters, and returned to Earth. For the UWMS on the ISS, the canisters are packed into disposable spacecraft that burn up in the atmosphere upon reentry while liquid wastes are treated, distilled, and turned back into potable water. Artemis II is a short mission, so the solid wastes return to Earth with the crew while liquid wastes are vented into space several times per day.<\/p>\n
Waste management consists of a complex set of processes on a spacecraft. There\u2019s only microgravity in space, so fans must be used to direct waste products. According to NASA, the space toilet in the Orion capsule is 65% smaller and 40% lighter than the model used in the ISS. Part of that size reduction is due to the combining of the solid and liquid waste impeller fans into one machined rotor, as shown in the image below.<\/p>\n
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By combining the space toilet\u2019s two air impellers into one machined rotor, engineers were able to reduce the size and weight of the space toilet in the Orion capsule by 65% and 40%, relative to a similar design used in the ISS. Image credit: Tom Stapleton, United Technology Aerospace Systems<\/p>\n
Air flow provided by a dual fan separator in the UWMS replaces gravity in the collection of liquid and solid waste, provides odor control, and removes air from the waste streams. Combining the two fan impellers used by previous space toilet designs into a single fan housing driven by one motor provides much of the resultant reduction in mass and volume. The dual-fan impeller machined into one rotor is driven by one axle and one motor and is enclosed in a 3D printed titanium housing.<\/p>\n
An image of the Orion capsule\u2019s space toilet appears below. Clearly, it\u2019s a complex electromechanical system. The controller board sits in a gray metal box situated in the center of the photo below, just under the yellow callout number 5.<\/p>\n
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The Orion capsule\u2019s space toilet is a complex electromechanical system. Its controller board sits in a gray metal box situated just under the yellow callout numbered \u201c5.\u201d Image credit: NASA<\/p>\n
When astronauts reported a blinking fault light for the space toilet, NASA suspected that the toilet\u2019s dual impeller had jammed. Koch troubleshot the problem by field stripping the toilet, checking the dual-bladed impeller, and then reassembling the unit and rebooting the UWMS controller to restore the toilet\u2019s operation. During a press conference from space, Koch said that it appears that the impeller\u2019s rotor was not jammed but just a little stiff, likely due to a long period of inactivity before launch. The stiffness caused the impeller to spin up more slowly than expected by the controller software.<\/p>\n
(Note: Fans of \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d television series may see some similarity between the situation on Artemis II and a \u201cBig Bang\u201d episode titled \u201cThe Classified Materials Turbulence,\u201d in which a space toilet designed for the ISS by main character Howard Wolowitz fails catastrophically after only a few flushes.)<\/p>\n
Because of the successful UWMS fix, several mentions in media ranging from \u201cScientific American\u201d to \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d have referred to Koch as a \u201cspace plumber.\u201d During a live press conference from the Orion capsule as it sped to the moon on April 3, Koch proudly applied the term to herself. At the time of the repair, the Orion capsule was in an extremely elliptical Earth orbit. Its perigee was only 115 miles, but its apogee was 43,500 miles, making Koch\u2019s the most distant plumbing repair call in history. I would not be surprised if some smart plumbers\u2019 organization here on Earth didn\u2019t make Koch an honorary member. I think it would be a brilliant PR move.<\/p>\n
After the space toilet was returned to service, the mission control crew at NASA recommended that astronauts start up the UWMS fans and give them time to reach full speed before \u201cmaking a donation.\u201d That\u2019s NASA-speak for using the space toilet. Unfortunately, at full speed the fans are loud enough that astronauts need hearing protection while using the toilet. Clearly, more development is needed in this area.<\/p>\n
A sophisticated electronic controller supervises the various waste-management processes in the UWMS through a sensor array and communicates with the rest of the Orion telemetry system via an RS-422 interface, as described in a technical paper titled \u201cNASA Exploration Toilet Hardware Technical Challenges and Accomplishments\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UWMS Controller determines the actions that the system takes and controls the responses and indications required by the user. It is therefore a key part of the system\u2019s fault detection, isolation, and indication scheme. There are two UWMS configurations: the -1 configuration which is the ISS unit, and the -2 configuration which is the Orion unit. The Controller Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) differ for the two configurations; version -006 is the ISS FPGA, while version -004 is the Orion FPGA.\u201d<\/p>\n