Is the toilet the ‘most important piece of equipment’ on Artemis II?
When we sent four humans into space for the first time, 406,771 kilometers away, we also sent a toilet with them.
After all, if the plan is to go any further, it is important that we test one of the non-negotiable parts of being human.
The saga of the Artemis II toilet – officially known as the Universal Waste Management System – is a drama, unfolding in several acts.
Post launch problems
The incredible launch of Artemis II on April 1 was exciting for people on Earth, but the crew got to work immediately.
Mission specialist Christina Koch reported a problem with the toilet about an hour after launch. After a brief communications interruption, Mission Control responded.
Stan Love, a NASA astronaut and the crew’s touchpoint at Mission Control at the time, said, “We’re speculating that the axon beads came loose and moved in and jammed the fan separator.”
“We can get in there and clean it up,” Love said.
Troubleshooting took a few hours, with the coach essentially rewiring the toilet, but to the crew’s relief, it worked.
The Artemis II astronauts connected to Earth via video on Thursday, after completing the translunar injection burn that is taking them toward the moon, to answer questions from reporters about their experience so far. Mission specialist Christina Koch declares herself a ‘space plumber’ after fixing a faulty toilet onboard.
“I’m proud to call myself a space plumber,” Koch later told the media. “I like to say it’s probably the most important piece of equipment on board.”
NASA officials later clarified the issue by saying that the system was shutting down automatically because there was not enough water in the pump, a hiccup they described as par for the course.
“We’ve got real humans in there,” said Lori Glaze, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. In the press conference of April 2.
“They’re trying to survive and learn,” Glaze said.
‘A complex engineering issue’
UWMS, which Located inside a small alcove on the floor of the Orion capsule, differs in some ways Than a regular toilet due to lack of gravity. For example, feces are sucked into a bag that is sealed and then deposited under the toilet floor.
Meanwhile, for urine, each astronaut has his own hose that uses some air flow to draw the liquid into storage. Urine is passed several times a day In space, in an impressively frozen stream. It was called a “blizzard” during mission control. A special exit.
But just a few days into Artemis II, the urine drainage lines began to block and freeze. The solution ultimately ended up being the rotation of the Orion capsule so that sunlight would fall on the holes – thawing the frozen waste water.
“It’s a complex engineering issue when you expose a liquid to a vacuum. It’s a very chaotic environment,” Artemis II entry flight director Rick Henfling said during a media briefing.
Sanitation Bay Secrets
Meanwhile, inside the capsule, the crew noticed a strange smell coming from their “bathroom”.
“To me, it was some kind of burning smell,” mission specialist and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen said during a conversation with mission control.
“It was definitely in the hygiene bay. And when I opened the hygiene bay, the rest of the crew smelled it immediately,” he said.
When NASA noticed this, they rejected the use of heaters and toilets near the hygiene bays. They determined that it was not dangerous and ultimately, At the April 8 news briefingDebbie Korth, Orion’s deputy program manager, said there have been no other reports of the odor.
Peeing is still a difficult task
From that point, things seemed to be working well until ventilation problems reared their heads again.
“We just want to let you know that right now, the restrooms cannot be used,” Jenny Gibbons said from Houston on day five, delivering the bad news to the crew.
The backup plan for the crew is the collapsible contingency urinal, which is essentially a long tube that astronauts use to store urine that can also be ejected, provided that system is working. Although this may seem inconvenient, note that the Apollo astronauts had to use fecal bag That they put a disinfectant.
Mission control’s theory about what went wrong this time was the process of preventing bacterial formations from forming in the lines.
“There could be something going on with the chemical reaction, where there’s some debris that’s produced as part of that reaction and it’s getting clogged in the filter,” Henfling said. At an April 7 press conference in Houston.
While this is a disappointing malfunction, experts say it’s what can be expected from a device like this on its maiden voyage.
“There’s always going to be some quirks with this, right? There’s going to be things that don’t work,” said John Moores, associate professor of Earth and space science and engineering. at York University and co-host of the Popcorn Science Podcast. He says this interplay of systems involving fluids, mechanical and electrical components is one of the more complex things on a spacecraft.
The hope – in line with the goal of the entire Artemis II mission – is that future crews will overcome the bathroom problems. When the capsule splashes down into the Pacific Ocean on Friday evening, NASA teams hope to take it to the toilet to see what went wrong.
“As we get further into space, these missions are going to get longer and longer,” Moores said.
“You wouldn’t want to go to Mars, which is a trip of months, with a toilet that’s not working for you.”
