<\/p>\n The Apollo<\/a> astronauts did their business in the open, peeing into a roll-on cuff and pooping into plastic bags<\/a> in the presence of their crewmates. But the Artemis 2 spaceflyers \u2014 NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen \u2014 will have access to a bona fide bathroom.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n “We’re pretty fortunate as a crew to have a toilet with a door on this tiny spacecraft,” Hansen said in a video explainer<\/a> about Orion’s bathroom that was posted on YouTube last October.<\/p>\n It’s “the one place that we can go during the mission where we can actually feel like we’re alone for a moment,” he added.<\/p>\n Vlog 18: The lunar loo \u2013 or going to the bathroom during a mission to the Moon – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n This sanctuary is not very spacious; it’s about the size of a lavatory on a small passenger jet, according to Lockheed Martin<\/a>, which built Orion for NASA. But even that amount of room is impressive, given that the capsule has just 330 cubic feet (9.34 cubic meters) of habitable volume \u2014 roughly the same as two minivans<\/a> \u2014 and it has to accommodate four people for a week and a half. (The Apollo crew module was even smaller at 210 cubic feet, or 5.95 cubic m, but only three astronauts flew aboard it at a time.)<\/p>\n The door to Orion’s lavatory is on the capsule’s floor. This orientation may seem odd on Earth<\/a>, but it won’t appear so in the microgravity<\/a> environment of space.<\/p>\n “You would float over to it, open up this hinging door and float on in,” Hansen said.<\/p>\n The bathroom \u2014 or “hygiene bay,” as NASA calls it \u2014 also features privacy curtains, which Artemis 2 astronauts may or may not use during the mission.<\/p>\n “If there’s more space needed, they can leave the door open and put up a privacy curtain,” Debbie Korth, deputy Orion Program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center<\/a> in Houston, told reporters during a press conference in September 2025.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n Once they’re inside the hygiene bay, the Artemis 2 astronauts will have more to work with than just some bags and a condom-like cuff. (The Apollo astronauts were all men, remember, so designers didn’t have to come up with waste-disposal solutions that worked for both sexes.) Indeed, Orion’s toilet is very similar to the one that astronauts use on the U.S. segment of the International Space Station<\/a> (ISS) \u2014 a device known as the Universal Waste Management System<\/a> (UWMS).<\/p>\n \n A NASA team member demonstrates lifting the urine hose of the International Space Station’s Universal Waste Management System from its cradled position like a crewmember would for use. A funnel (not shown) would be attached to the open end of this hose and be easily replaced or removed for disinfection. (Image credit: NASA)<\/p>\n The UWMS features a seat atop a canister, with a long, flexible urine hose attached. Each Artemis 2 astronaut will have his or her own funnel for that hose, to keep things as sanitary as possible. Urine will go down the hose, with air flow doing the shepherding work rather than gravity.<\/p>\n The UWMS on the ISS recycles urine, turning it into water that crewmembers can use. But Artemis 2 is a short mission, so its toilet doesn’t need to do that; rather, the astronauts’ urine will be vented into space several times per day.<\/p>\n The story is a bit different for solid waste.<\/p>\n “The feces get sucked down into the bottom, into a bag. You close that off, and you squish it down into the bottom, into the canister,” Hansen said in the video. “During the mission, we’ll have to change out that solid waste canister a few times, and all of that comes back to Earth with us.”<\/p>\n
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