Four astronauts are about to embark on a historic voyage that will take them around the moon in a spacecraft about the size of a large camper van.
During the Artemis II mission, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, will spend 10 days inside the Orion capsule after being blasted to space by the SLS rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, hopefully next week.
As many astronauts have noted over the years, the question they’re asked more than any other is: “How do astronauts use the bathroom in microgravity conditions?” This most often applies to the International Space Station (ISS), where crews usually stay for around six months before returning to Earth.
But many folks are also curious about how the four Artemis II astronauts will deal with basic bodily needs while traveling farther from Earth than any human since the final Apollo mission in 1972.
Helpfully, Jeremy Hansen has made a video (top) about that very subject while preparing for the upcoming and highly anticipated mission.
First up, the Canadian astronaut notes that Orion’s bathroom includes a door, giving a visiting astronaut a modicum of privacy as they set about doing what they have to do.
“We’re pretty fortunate … to have a toilet with a door, on this tiny spacecraft,” Hansen comments in the video, adding that it’s “the one place we can go during the mission where we can actually feel like we’re alone for a moment.”
And then it’s onto the practicalities of doing your business in a way that ensures nothing floats off into the cabin, a situation that would soon spell disaster in such a tight space.
Similar to the bathroom on the ISS, the Orion’s toilet features a urine hose to remove the liquid before it floats away in the microgravity conditions. Deposited feces, meanwhile, get sucked down into the bottom of the toilet and into a bag. This is then closed off and squeezed down into a canister.
“During the mission, we’ll have to change out that solid waste canister a few times, and all of that comes back to Earth with us,” Hansen explains. “As far as the urine goes, it gets collected and a few times a day, we vent that urine to space.”
That’s different to the ISS, where urine is processed through the station’s Water Recovery System and recycled into drinking water for the crew.
The Artemis II crew are just days away from putting the Orion’s toilet through its paces in an epic voyage that will take them within around 5,000 miles of the lunar surface. Best not be stuck on the toilet for that one!
The spacecraft’s high-tech bathroom just goes to show that for all the glitz and glamor of space travel, such extraordinary endeavors are still full of very practical challenges.