Featured Image Credit: NASA / Handout / Getty
Everyone's eyes were fixed on the historic launch of NASA's Artemis 2 mission on Wednesday, as the Orion spacecraft took the first steps in a journey that will eventually see astronauts returned to the Moon for the first time in over half a century.
This particular mission won't see the crew step foot on the Moon's surface as that will be reserved for the subsequent Artemis 3 launch, yet they will complete a full orbit of the nearby space rock and hopefully capture the best possible view of the mysterious dark side of Earth's only natural satellite.
In total the journey is expected to last for around 10 days with no stop off point along the way, so ensuring that everything is working as intended in the admittedly cramped vessel is of paramount importance.
There was initially a potential issue with lightning clouds at the spacecraft's launch yesterday, threatening to delay the historic mission once more to the frustration of many, but it was thankfully cleared and everything went ahead as planned.
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Unfortunately that wasn't the last hiccup that the crew experienced, however, as just a few hours after the Orion had successfully launched itself into the air another rather gross problem cropped up that would make the longest recorded space journey quite uncomfortable for the passengers on board.
As reported by the BBC, the crew – which includes Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen – were going through the spacecraft's life support checks, encountering an unexpected issue when they reached the toilet.
It initially appeared to be working as intended, as astronauts informed mission control that the device was 'powered' and the waste tank was 'merged', but several minutes after this report they noticed that the toilet's amber warning light was showing with no clear indication of what the issue was.
It's not just the hygiene and health risk that this could create that likely struck fear into the astronauts but also the danger that it could lead perhaps to other issues with the spacecraft, and mission control was scrambling for a solution.
Thankfully it didn't take too long for the crew to work out what was wrong and restore the toilet to normal working order, but it would have been tragic to have to abort the already-iconic journey all because of an issue with the loo.
It's not the first time that NASA astronauts have run into toilet issues though, as while the process of going for a poo in space is apparently both complicated and expensive, there's also the famous incident during the Apollo 10 mission where a 'floating turd' was seen (and smelt) throughout the ship.
In fact, the first ever mission to the Moon saw Apollo 11's Columbia go without a toilet because of how messy it proved to be, as all NASA could figure out at the time was a system reliant on funnels and plastic bags.
It's something that you don't necessarily think about when you imagine the wonders of space travel, yet it's a natural part of human life that isn't always pretty or practical.
