At Saturday’s news briefing, John Honeycutt, a NASA engineer who chairs the Mission Management Team, was asked about the public’s interest in Orion’s toilet.
He acknowledged the curiosity. “I think the preoccupation with the toilet is somewhat human,” he said. Honeycutt noted it isn’t a mission risk, but warned that if the crew were essentially camping aboard the spacecraft, the current arrangement makes things a bit harder. “I know we’re in a good state, but I would really like it to be in the best state it can be,” he said.
It’s important to remember that space toilets are hard to design. On Earth, abundant water and gravity make using the bathroom straightforward. In microgravity it becomes far more difficult. Apollo astronauts used bags. The space shuttle’s toilet occasionally failed. The International Space Station has four toilets and, with more space and ample recycled water, the issue is less severe.
Space toilets must work reliably
This is not a small issue.
You can get away with “roughing it” for bathroom needs on trips to the Moon, but a voyage to Mars — months in transit — is a different situation. If a toilet fails en route to Mars, there’s a real chance the crew could face life-threatening consequences. That’s why testing these systems on Orion now is valuable: the test flight exists to confirm life-support systems function for the crew, to find problems, and to allow fixes before future missions.
Overall, the Artemis II mission continues to proceed very well. Debbie Korth, deputy manager of NASA’s Orion program, said Saturday that the spacecraft is performing “remarkably well,” and that the vehicle’s overall behavior has “pleasantly surprised” the engineers on the program.
Things are going so smoothly, in fact, that attention has centered on frozen urine. Given the many serious things that could go wrong on a hazardous deep-space journey, a minor issue like this feels like a victory.
