THEto mission NASA’s Artemis II And departed Wednesday from the Cape Canaveral base with four astronauts on board, headed towards the Moon for the first time since 1972. A historic journey of 685 thousand miles. Yet, a few hours after take-off, the first emergency did not concern the route or the engines, but something much more domestic: the toilet stopped working. And if the crew on the Orion capsule consists of three men (Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen) and a woman (mission specialist Christina Koch), it was the latter who solved the problem.
Astronaut Christina Koch, space plumber by necessity
The system in question is the so-called Universal Waste Management Systema $30 million device that has showed a fan failure as soon as the Orion capsule reached orbit. The teams on the ground analyzed the data, but it was the field that solved the problem Christina Koch, mission specialist and holder of the record for longest stay in space for a woman (328 consecutive days). “I’ll take care of it,” he said. «I’m space hydraulics and I’m proud to call myself that. I like to say it’s probably the most important piece of equipment on board.”
Sigh of relief (literally)
The problem was solved, and the astronaut’s humor went around the world almost as much as the capsule. «We all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw that it worked perfectly», concluded Koch in an interview with ABC News live from space. The mission continues regularly: the crew has successfully completed the translunar injection maneuver and now the laws of orbital mechanics will take the four astronauts around the Moon and back to Earth.
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