NASA astronaut Christina Koch took on the role of a ‘space plumber’ after the Orion spacecraft’s toilet faced some issues on the Artemis II mission shortly after launch on April 2.
The fault was found in the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), as NASA calls it, and teams jumped into fixing it right away. After a few hours of troubleshooting, the agency announced that the issue was resolved. “Ahead of the apogee raise burn on April 1, the Artemis II crew reported a blinking fault light and mission control teams successfully assessed the data and worked with the crew to troubleshoot and resolve the issue,” the update said.
During a brief Q&A from space earlier today, the Artemis II crew was asked who fixed the toilet and everyone jokingly pointed at Koch.
“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”
Mission specialists like @Astro_Christina train for all roles so they can jump in wherever they’re needed. Sometimes that means fixing vital machinery, like the spacecraft toilet. pic.twitter.com/RGBWkwRgX7
— NASA (@NASA) April 3, 2026
“I’ll take that one. I’m the space plumber. I’m proud to call myself the space plumber. It’s probably the most important equipment onboard so we were all breathing a sigh of relief after it turned out to be just fine,” Koch said.
“It was just an issue of sitting for a long time and needing a little time to warm up. We did originally think that there could’ve been something fouling of the motor and luckily we are all systems go.”
Notably, this is the first time Moon-bound astronauts have a proper toilet access as the Apollo-era fliers had to poop in a plastic bag. The Orion toilet uses airflow to suck solid waste into a container that will be disposed of after the spacecraft returns to Earth but similar to Apollo missions, urine, which is collected via a hose, will be vented out into space.
Reports say NASA has spent around $30 million to build a toilet for the Artemis astronauts.
NASA’s Artemis II is now Moon-bound
The Artemis II astronauts – Koch, Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover – are officially enroute to the Moon after the Orion completed a trans-lunar injection burn earlier today. This has put the spacecraft on a lunar path and a free-return trajectory back to Earth.
Orion will reach the Moon in about three days from now and the entire mission will last approximately 10 days. One of the main objectives of Artemis II is to test life support systems of the Orion spacecraft, including the toilet, for future lunar missions later this decade.
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