Before wrapping up their first flight day, the crew of Artemis 2 pulled off another feat of NASA in-flight troubleshooting: fixing their broken toilet.
It might not rank as NASA’s no. 1 triumph, or even its no. 2. But the Artemis crew may take more comfort in solving this problem than any other on this mission. The fix came roughly six hours into the flight — a period during which at least one astronaut had to resort to peeing in a (NASA flight-approved) bag.
Soon after launch, NASA confirmed that there was a problem with the toilet fan on the Orion spacecraft. The issue was due to a malfunctioning controller — a part in the toilet’s control system — said NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya at a press conference. The particular difficulty for Artemis 2’s toilet meant that while astronauts could still poop in the toilet, they couldn’t pee in it.
In space toilets, fans aren’t there just to air the place out. In zero gravity, the airflow also helps pull waste into the toilet, preventing it from drifting into the cabin. This was a real problem on Apollo and earlier missions, where the spacecraft had no toilets and astronauts had to poop in plastic bags taped to their butts. A faulty seal could lead to incidents of the kind experienced most infamously on Apollo 10. (An example line from the mission transcript: “Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air.”)
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Late Wednesday night (EDT), mission specialist Christina Koch took on the role of space plumber, removing parts from the toilet and executing a series of steps radioed up from Houston while controllers on the ground monitored the toilet’s systems and took remote troubleshooting measures, including turning it on and off.
The fix worked.
“Happy to report that toilet is go for use,” said CapCom Amy Dill after the last of Mission Control’s remote evaluations. “We do recommend letting the system get up to operating speed before donating fluid and then let it run a little bit after donation,” she added, in an impressive piece of NASA jargon.
“We are cheers all around,” Koch responded.
Cleanup procedures
Although the toilet was fixed, there was still the issue of cleaning up the used urinal bag: “We have at least one CCU that will need to be emptied,” Koch said, referring to the bag-and-funnel system by its formal name, the Collapsible Contingency Urinal. The standard procedure for emptying the urinal is to dump it overboard through the spacecraft’s venting system.
“We thought you might,” Dill said. “So we went ahead and warmed up the heater so you’re good to empty the CCU at your convenience.”
Seconds later, Dill radioed, “And correction — we actually want you to hold off for now on the CCU emptying for potential GNC impact. So we’ll let you know when we’re ready for that.”
GNC stands for guidance, navigation, and control. Translation: Don’t dump your pee overboard yet because doing so at this time might produce a tiny thrust that might push or spin the craft and confuse the ship’s navigation system.
In the early morning hours of April 2 (EDT), the crew was approved to perform the CCU dump.
Fixing a toilet may seem, well, hilarious, and mundane on a mission that NASA has billed as America’s “grand return to the Moon.” But it’s a reminder that Artemis 2 is fundamentally a test flight, intended to identify issues and fix them. And the toilet on Artemis 2 is historic, too, as the first commode to be installed on any crewed deep-space mission. It’s an innovation the crew will surely appreciate over the next 10 days — and future crews will gladly reap the benefits of their troubleshooting, too.
