The four Artemis II astronauts are preparing to head toward the moon after an eventful day in orbit that included a broken toilet and an email meltdown. The four astronauts—NASA's Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover, plus Canadian Jeremy Hansen—also ran into a communications blackout shortly after blasting off and reaching orbit Wednesday, NBC News reports. Mission Control suddenly stopped receiving data or voice from the Orion capsule, though the crew could still hear Houston. NASA says the dropout was short-lived, is under investigation, and did not involve any problem with the spacecraft itself.
Then came a flashing fault light from one of the least glamorous pieces of lunar hardware: the toilet. Orion's "Universal Waste Management System" vents urine into space and stores solid waste for the trip home. Mission Control guided Koch through some space plumbing, the AP reports. NASA said Thursday that the system was back to normal after the overnight fix. Had it stayed offline, the backup plan involved bag-based "collapsible contingency urinals" for urine while still using the toilet for feces. There were no toilets on previous moon missions, in which astronauts used what became known as "Apollo bags."
The crew also needed help with something even more familiar to office workers than a balky bathroom: Microsoft Outlook. While setting up onboard computers, Wiseman reported that two versions of the email program were installed and neither would run. Ground teams remotely fixed the glitch and got the crew's inbox working.
- In the "translunar burn" Thursday, the spacecraft "will ignite its main engine on the service module for five minutes and 49 seconds" beginning at 7:49pm Eastern, NASA says.
- "We love those words, and we're loving the view," Hansen said after NASA greenlighted the first translunar injection since 1972. The AP reports that Koch, who spent a year at an Antarctic research station before joining NASA, told Mission Control that the view included the South Pole. "It is just absolutely phenomenal," she said,
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