The Artemis II astronauts, on track for a flight around the dark side of the moon Monday, faced a relatively quiet day aboard their Orion crew capsule Saturday while engineers on the ground worked to solve a toilet issue.Overnight, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen reached a milestone of sorts on their historic voyage to the moon.”And Integrity, (this is) Houston, we have some news to share with you,” called spacecraft communicator Jackie Mahafey in mission control. “As of 30 seconds ago, you are now closer to the moon than you are to us on Earth.”A camera on the end of an Orion solar wing shows the spacecraft and its target — the moon — suspended in black of deep space. / Credit: NASA”Wow, Jackie, thank you for sharing that with us,” replied Koch. “We all kind of had a collective, I guess, expression of joy at that. It’s hard to imagine, but we can see here on our (instrumentation) that we are at 118,000 nautical miles (from the moon). So yeah, you can do the math.”The astronauts looked back toward Earth Friday and captured this stunning shot of the home planet as a thin crescent. / Credit: NASAShe said the crew was enjoying views of the moon through Orion’s docking hatch window.AdvertisementAdvertisement”It is a beautiful sight,” Koch said. “We’re seeing more and more of the far side, and it’s just a thrill to be here.”Astronaut Christina Koch takes in a view of planet Earth as the Artemis II crew headed for deep space and a flight around the far side of the moon Monday. / Credit: NASAThe crew has had intermittent problems with their space toilet since launch on Wednesday, occasionally being told to avoid its use in favor of collapsible contingency urinals, or CCUs, bags used for urine collection that can be emptied to space later.Early Saturday, as the crew was preparing for bed, flight controllers were unable to dump the toilet’s stored urine overboard as needed, possibly because of a frozen vent line. The astronauts were told, once again, to use their CCUs until the problem was resolved.Later in the day, after crew wakeup, flight controllers re-oriented the Orion capsule to allow sunlight to w …
