The Orion spacecraft is, at least for the next few days, the home away from home for the Artemis II astronauts.
And in space, just like on Earth, things around the house occasionally don’t work.
As the four-person crew begins their space trip, a few systems inside the NASA vehicle have had minor hiccups. Among them: a temporary loss of communications shortly after the Wednesday evening launch and a sticky valve in the water-tank system.
Then there was the problem with the toilet.
The Universal Waste Management System, as the device is officially called, uses airflow to get rid of waste. Urine is stored in a tank and is vented out each day; solids are stored in canisters designed to control odor and gas buildup.
Before one of Orion’s in-space maneuvers, crew members reported a problem with the toilet, indicated by a blinking fault light. Mission controllers in Houston, however, were able to work with astronaut Christina Koch to put in a fix.
“OK, Christina. We are ready for you to attempt reactivation of toilet,” said Amy Dill , who was serving as the capcom, or the person who communicates with the crew from mission control in Houston. Dill asked Koch to remove a urine hose and let the system run for one minute.
“It worked!” Koch later responded.
Those issues aside, the Artemis II crew—Koch, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover from NASA, as well as Jeremy Hansen , representing the Canadian Space Agency—had a packed start to their flight.
Ground teams woke them a bit after 7 a.m. ET, playing the song “Sleepyhead” by Young & Sick.
“They’re very busy,” Norm Knight , the top director for a NASA flight operations division, said at a Wednesday night briefing. “Ascent day is tough. It’s tough physiologically, and it’s tough from a workload issue as well.”
A big part of the initial workload was conducting checks of life support, propulsion and other Orion systems to ensure they were functioning as planned. During the powerful launch of the spacecraft into space, Orion experienced what Knight called “shake, rattle and roll,” potentially affecting onboard devices and operations.
Moon bound
The goal was to make sure everything was working before the craft attempted what is called the translunar injection—when Orion’s main engine fires away, giving the vehicle a big push to fly out to the moon. The engine provides up to 6,000 pounds of thrust, enough to accelerate a car from standstill to 60 miles an hour in a little less than three seconds.
The mission management team, a group of senior NASA officials that are overseeing Artemis II, voted Thursday to proceed with the operation. It began about 7:50 p.m. ET, and lasted for almost six minutes.
“The crew’s feeling pretty good up here, on our way to the moon,” Hansen said shortly afterward. On a NASA livestream, some mission controllers working on the operation in Houston exchanged smiles and hugs.
A little after 8 p.m., Orion was about 1,800 miles from the planet and racing away at more than 20,000 miles an hour, according to a NASA tracking website.
Earlier, the crew was able to pull off a unique operation in which they manually flew Orion in space.
The test lasted about 70 minutes, allowing them to practice approaching and backing away from part of the rocket, which served as a reference point for Orion’s movements.
They also spent time documenting their journey, including snapping iPhone photos of Earth. Earlier this year, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency would allow smartphones on Artemis II and future missions.
“We are getting just a beautiful view of the dark side of the Earth right now, lit by the moon. Phenomenal,” Hansen said at one point Thursday evening.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com
