Artemis II astronauts face toilet trouble as they head toward the moon

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission are more than halfway to the moon after launching Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center, but a familiar problem has surfaced.

For the second time since launch, Orion’s toilet is malfunctioning.

"During the night, we tried to vent the wastewater tank that's attached to the toilet. We had problems with that, due to suspected blockage we think probably due to ice. So we directed the crew overnight to use their collapsible contingency urine devices," Judd Frieling, the Artemis II flight director, explained during a news conference Saturday.

The astronauts encountered a similar problem with the toilet on the first day of their mission. The ship's lunar loo malfunctioned following liftoff and has remained a lingering issue.

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Debbie Korth, NASA’s Orion program deputy manager, said the toilet is still operable.

"You know, this is a test flight. We're figuring out how these systems work together, but it is operable, and we have redundancy to get us through the mission," she said.

The toilet, NASA confirmed, is still available for astronauts to use for solid waste.

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"Space toilets and bathrooms are something everybody can really understand .. it’s always a challenge," Korth said.

John Honeycutt, chair of the mission management team, said the public's interest in the Orion toilet was "kind of human nature."

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"I mean, everybody knows how important that is to us here on Earth and it's harder to manage in space. I'm interested in it, you know? I mean, I know we're in a good state right now, but I would really like for it to be in the best state that it can be for the crew's sake," he said. "It's a little bit of camping in space already, but then it makes it camping a little bit tougher when you don't have the full capability of the toilet."

"But you know, they're okay and they're trying to manage through the situation," Honeycutt added.

NASA said the astronauts reported a smell coming from the bathroom, which is located in the floor of the capsule.

"Regarding the smell, I just wanted to make sure you all were tracking the EGS notes of the kind of burning heater smell that was coming from toilet several times," astronaut Christina Koch, who helped address the issue earlier this week, told mission control on Saturday, according to Space.com.

Orion will orbit the moon on Monday before heading back to Earth.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.