SPACECRAP
Faulty $23 million Artemis II toilet leaves astronauts up a creek
A Crappy Situation: Artemis II’s Very Expensive Toilet Requires Multiple In-Flight Repairs
There are billion-dollar rockets, decades of engineering, and the full weight of American ambition behind Artemis II — and then there’s the toilet.Within hours of launch, astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft ran into an issue with the capsule’s “Universal Waste Management System,” a compact, next-generation space toilet that reportedly cost more than $23 million to develop. Mission specialist Christina Koch flagged that a fan had jammed in the urine collection system, rendering half the toilet’s functionality unusable.Engineers on the ground scrambled to troubleshoot while the crew fell back on contingency measures, including collapsible backup urinals not far removed from older, less glamorous eras of space travel.“The toilet fan is reported to be jammed,” NASA spokesperson Gary Jordan said during live mission commentary, as engineers scrambled to diagnose the issue from the ground. Officials later clarified that while the system’s urine function was temporarily offline, “the fecal collection of the toilet … can still be used,” forcing astronauts to rely on backup measures for...
