Artemis II is going so well that we're left to talk about frozen urine
The Orion spacecraft is now much closer to the Moon than Earth on its 10-day journey into deep space and back, and overall everything is going smashingly well. Things are going so well that, during the daily mission briefings at Johnson Space Center in Houston, there's just not that much of substance to talk about. So the discourse keeps coming back to, of all things, the toilet on board Orion. As you may recall, there were some toilet problems in the initial hours of the mission. During the initial checkout of spacecraft systems, Orion's toilet was supposed to be “wetted” with water to prime the pump. Not enough water was introduced, so the pump was non-responsive. Once more water was added, it began functioning fine. Read full article Comments
The Orion spacecraft is now much closer to the Moon than Earth on its 10-day journey into deep space and back, and overall everything is going smashingly well.
Things are going so well that, during the daily mission briefings at Johnson Space Center in Houston, there's just not that much of substance to talk about. So the discourse keeps coming back to, of all things, the toilet on board Orion.
“I think the fixation on the toilet is kind of human nature.”
It was a minor blip, but the Internet went crazy for crap for about 24 hours.
By Friday night there was another problem. Urine is collected in a small tank, about the size of an office trash can. From there it is supposed to be vented into space, which is to say dumped overboard to sail around the cosmos until the end of time. However, flight controllers noted that astronaut pee had frozen in the tank. There were no issues with using the toilet for no. 2, but no. 1 was a no-go.
