Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
NASA’s Artemis II crew, currently returning from the moon inside the Orion capsule, reported a persistent burning smell emanating from the spacecraft’s lavatory. Mission Specialist Christina Koch first flagged the odor on Saturday and again on Sunday, describing it as the smell of an old electric heater starting up after a long dormancy. Houston initially blamed the orange insulation around the hygiene bay door. The crew disagreed. The investigation is being conducted remotely, as is the smelling.
Looks… comfortable. (Canadian Space Agency)
Koch, who holds a degree in electrical engineering and a second degree in electrical engineering, fixed a blinking fault light in the same toilet during the first hour of the mission. She has since self-identified as the “space plumber.” She refers to the Universal Waste Management System as “probably the most important piece of equipment onboard,” a ranking that places it above the guidance computer and on par with window integrity. The day-one fault was traced to a jammed fan and a priming issue, both of which Koch resolved by sitting patiently with it, which is also how NASA prefers to handle most of its problems.
Engineers are evaluating whether the blockage, the smell, and the heater warning are related, unrelated, or simply coexisting in the way that all bad things in a sealed aluminum can eventually do, whether you want them to or not.
Koch, a career engineer who previously spent 328 days on the International Space Station and wintered at the Summit Station research base in Greenland, has been described in internal communications as “extremely qualified to handle this,” a sentence that was probably not meant to read as darkly as it does. Reports indicate she is sleeping “like a bat” and has requested an Honest Company care package from actress Jessica Alba, a detail that (probably) contains no innuendo whatsoever. She is also, reportedly, the only crew member who has stopped asking questions about the smell.
Should the waste management system fail entirely, astronauts are instructed to deploy Collapsible Contingency Urinal bags, which are jettisoned through a dedicated chute into the unknowable void, which is also a destination NASA’s public messaging has been tracking toward. The toilet’s flush, when functional, is loud enough to require hearing protection, a design choice officials describe as “a reminder that this is, in every sense, a journey.”
The situation remains under continuous evaluation, but does not, officials stress, constitute a major concern. A spokesperson clarified that NASA defines “major concern” as any event in which the odor becomes visible and/or sentient.
The capsule performed its lunar flyby earlier this week, at which point the four astronauts were briefly the farthest humans in history from a functioning bathroom.
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