World3 min(s) read
Published 11:21 17 Apr 2026 GMT
On a 10-day mission, the crew of Artemis II flew around the moon, reaching the furthest distance humans have ever travelled from Earth, 252,757 miles, on Tuesday, April 7, landing back on Earth in the Pacific Ocean three days later.
Thankfully, one of the mission’s only major blunders was a problem with the $23.5 million state-of-the-art toilet, which meant the four astronauts couldn’t use it to pee.
A waste pipe in the toilet system froze, so the tank could not be emptied, forcing the crew to urinate into plastic bags.
Yesterday, Commander Reid Wiseman addressed the faulty facility, which he described as a “wonderful toilet”, with a smile on his face.
In a press conference, he told Fox News: "You know, when you go to the bathroom, at the end of doing that, you flush the toilet?
“The toilet flushed just fine. But then when the liquid went out the bottom of the toilet, it got clogged up in our vent line."
According to Wiseman, the toilet’s tank could only hold “under 10 urination events, and then it must be dumped”.
He said: “For the first two days of the mission, it was fun to see that thing get dumped; it's an interesting thing to see out the window.”
Artemis II’s commander described seeing the urine enter space as: “watching a billion tiny flecks of ice heading out into deep space.”
Mission Control came up with a fix by tilting the pipe so it sat in the sun, but the crammed-in astronauts were stuck with the alternative until the ice melted.
The crew of four reported a smell of burning coming from the loo in the first couple of days of their mission, but it was fixed by the mission engineer, Christina Koch, who dubbed herself the “space plumber”.
It then broke for a second time just days later, and the astronauts were instructed to use it for faecal matters only.
However, Wiseman expressed his gratitude to the people who made the toilet despite its faults.
He said: "For those great engineers that made that toilet, I don't want them hanging their head low.
“They should hang it very high. It was a great piece of gear."
The 322ft rocket carried four crew members, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.
There were emotional scenes when the crew reached the furthest distance from Earth as mission Commander Wiseman named one of the craters they discovered after his wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.
