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.

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Origianl Creator:
Eric Berger

Original Link: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/artemis-ii-is-going-so-well-that-were-left-to-talk-about-frozen-urine/
Originally Posted: Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:12:45 +0000