When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: NASAHOUSTON — A burning smell from the toilet is not something you’d want to experience on Earth, so when it happened to NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts on the way to the moon — well, you can bet Mission Control was listening.Late Friday (April 3), as NASA’s Artemis 2 mission passed the halfway mark to the moon, the four astronauts on board reported a burning smell coming from their novel Orion space toilet.AdvertisementAdvertisement”For me, it was some sort of burning odor, and then it was definitely in the hygiene bay,” said Artemis 2 mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. “And when I opened up the hygiene bay, the rest of the crew could smell it pretty much immediately.” (You can see our latest updates on our Artemis 2 mission updates page.)The Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft as seen from its solar array cameras on the way to the moon. | Credit: NASANASA astronaut Christina Koch, also an Artemis 2 mission specialist, told Mission Control that the smell seemed to originate from the toilet, and was similar to an odor the crew smelled on the first day of the mission.Koch described it as “the kind of burning heater smell,” something that Hansen also confirmed.Hansen said he and the crew had been warned before flight of the potential for an odor similar to “when you turn on a heater that’s been sitting for a while and … you smell that burnt smell that comes from that,” he said. “And I do think it smells similar to that.”AdvertisementAdvertisementMission Control initially suspected the odor could be caused by orange insulation around the door to the …
