Artemis Astronauts Overcome Toilet Trouble and Officially Head Toward the Moon

Houston, we have a potty problem

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

April 3, 2026

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On April 1, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket sent four astronauts on a mission to the moon in the Artemis program’s first crewed flight. The lunar flyby will be the first time humans have been in the moon’s vicinity in more than 50 years. But not long after the crew took off, they ran into a problem: trouble with their spacecraft’s toilet.

Compared with the severely dangerous environment just outside the Orion spacecraft, a malfunctioning toilet might seem trivial. But the team nonetheless breathed a sigh of relief when they received the all-clear to use the bathroom appliance.

Shortly after Orion launched, its toilet, called the universal waste management system, displayed a blinking fault light, according to a NASA blog update. Luckily, the astronauts were able to work with the team back on Earth to remedy the situation.

The problem, it turns out, was that the toilet wasn’t wet enough, Artemis flight director Judd Frieling said in a press conference on Thursday. Not enough water had been added from the potable water dispenser to keep the pump sufficiently wet, he said. The pump’s automatic fault detection picked up on this and caused a shutdown.

“So once we figured out that we didn’t put enough water in, we put more in there, made sure that … the pump was primed, and then the toilet came right back up,” Frieling explained. Mission specialist Christina Koch implemented the fix from space. In those first six hours of the flight before they were able to get the toilet running again, at least one crewmember had to rely on a backup: peeing in a bag, according to Astronomy’s Mark Zastrow.

“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”

Mission specialists like @Astro_Christina train for all roles so they can jump in wherever they’re needed. Sometimes that means fixing vital machinery, like the spacecraft toilet. pic.twitter.com/RGBWkwRgX7

— NASA (@NASA) April 3, 2026

But having a toilet at all is a luxury compared with what Apollo astronauts had to work with: bags, bags and more bags. Urine collection included tubes, bags and tanks that ultimately vented the liquid into space, and solid waste was stored in bags and toted back to Earth for disposal. The problem was that in microgravity, everything floats, including urine and fecal matter.

The transcript of a conversation on Apollo 10, in 1969, highlights this issue in infamous hilarity. Mission commander Thomas Stafford was recorded saying, “Give me a napkin quick; there’s a turd floating through the air,” to which crewmate John Young responded, “I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine.”

As the Apollo bathroom procedures left room for improvement, engineers carefully developed Orion’s toilet. “I think of waste management as an evolution of design,” Melissa McKinley, a project manager at the NASA Johnson Space Center, tells Scientific American’s K. R. Callaway. “The toilet has built on designs from Apollo, the space shuttle and even the International Space Station. ... There is so much learning that goes into it.”

Following the successful @NASAArtemis translunar injection burn, the Orion capsule’s communications have once again transitioned from the Near Space Network to the Deep Space Network.

This is one of many planned comms handovers on the crew's journey around the Moon. 📡 pic.twitter.com/QaCiiaIEly

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 3, 2026

After Orion’s toilet was fixed, the team settled down for a four-hour nap before carrying on with their mission. On Thursday, they successfully completed the translunar injection burn, the maneuver that pushed them out of Earth’s orbit and in the direction of the moon. Afterward, Reid Wiseman, the mission commander, captured a breathtaking photograph of Earth.

In the coming days, Orion will loop once around the moon, temporarily losing contact with the team back on the ground as the astronauts sail behind Earth’s natural satellite. The crew will have the chance to make interesting observations, such as witnessing potential meteoroid strikes on the moon. Their position will also align to create a solar eclipse with the moon, during which they can study the sun’s outermost atmosphere.

Margherita Bassi | Read More

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.