The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission currently hurtling through space have had a largely quiet journey so far. Very few in-flight issues have cropped up that could disrupt their peace of mind.Except, that is, for the toilet.The Artemis II crew’s 16.5-foot-wide (5-meter-wide) Orion capsule experienced a waste management-related problem that arose in the early hours of Saturday as Day 3 was winding down.AdvertisementAdvertisement“It’s an issue with dumping the waste out of the toilet,” Artemis II Flight Director Judd Frieling told reporters Saturday morning. “And so it appears to me that we probably have some frozen urine in the vent line.”The astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were still fast asleep by midmorning nearly 200,000 miles (nearly 320,000 kilometers) from Earth as mission controllers continued to troubleshoot the issue. And by Saturday afternoon, early in Day 4 of the flight, mission controllers had a plan of attack: to warm up the frozen line by rotating the capsule to put the frozen urine into the sun.That appeared to partially unclog the pipe, allowing the capsule to expel some of the urine from the wastebasket-size tank into the vacuum of space.Shortly after, mission control said the toilet was “go” — but “for fecal use only.”AdvertisementAdvertisementEfforts to fix the commode continued throughout Saturday, but stubborn clogs prevented a full cleanout. Until, at last, around midnight Eastern time, mission control delivered the long-awaited update: “Breaking news,” mission control’s capsule communicator, Jacki Mahaffey, told the crew. “You are go for all types of use of the toilet.”“And the crew rejoices!” Koch replied. “Thank you!”Glistening space peeThe process of venting the urine outside the capsule was a moment Koch also showed on camera earlier in the mission. The pee trickles by like glowing gems in the vacuum of space as it zooms by the Orion’s windows.But the frozen vent line was not the crew’s only run-in with toilet troubles.AdvertisementAdvertisementShortly after launching to orbit from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, the crew realized the toilet’s pump wasn’t working. Pumps are important and used for a variety of reasons, including assisting with pulling waste from the body. In space, there is no gravity to assist with such expulsions.More in ScienceThat problem had a relatively straightforwar …
