Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

Summary

Artemis II’s toilet is a moon mission milestoneOn their voyages to the moon, NASA’s astronauts are finally getting some creature comforts of terrestrial toilets—such as having a door and being able to pee and poop simultaneouslyBy K. R. Callaway edited by Lee BillingsThe lunar-bound astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission will go boldly where none have gone before, thanks to the space agency’s first-ever flight of a functional toilet around the moon. NASA has launched four astronauts on a pioneering journey around the moon—the Artemis II mission. Follow our coverage here.When astronauts first made their way to the moon, they did so without a toilet. The Apollo program’s system of plastic bags and funnels was so unwieldy and messy that crew members found it “objectionable” and “distasteful,” according to a subsequent NASA report. But now, more than a half century since the last crewed lunar voyages and their toilet troubles, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission will take flight with a more commodious bathroom in tow.The space agency’s Universal Waste Management System (UWMS)—more colloquially called just “the toilet”—was created to solve longstanding potty problems faced by astronauts and to offer a more familiar bathroom experience on the final frontier. Lunar astronauts will now be spoiled by amenities that include handles to help them stay steady in microgravity, a system that can handle both urine and feces simultaneously, urine-collection devices that work for both male and female astronauts, and even a door for the helpful illusion of privacy in a cramped crew capsule.The new design is more than a decade in the making. Space infrastructure company Collins Aerospace first entered into a contract with NASA to develop the project in 2015. In that time, project scientists have overcome fundamental issues with past space toilets while imagining and meeting future needs so that the same system used by Artemis II astronauts could be adapted for moon and Ma...