Each morning, the Johnson Space Center in Houston wakes the Artemis II astronauts with music. Saturday, the awoke to “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan.
Today, the crew reaches the moon. NASA will livestream on YouTube the flyby starting at 1 p.m. Eastern
As they orbit the far side of the moon, the astronauts will lose communication with mission control for 40 minutes. At their current trajectory, the Orion spacecraft passes behind the moon between 6:45 and 7:25 Eastern tonight. (CNet)
SPACE AGE: High-Tech Toilet Making Trip Around the Moon
The crew of the Artemis 2 space mission will fly farther away from Earththan any humans in history before they return home on Friday. And even though they'll be more than 250,000 miles away from the planet, they have the same questions we all ask when we leave home — including, "Where's the bathroom?"
Back in the good old days — the 1960s and 70s Apollo missions — the astronauts pooped in a bag. These days, NASA has them hooked up with a "hygiene bay"with an actual door.
The hygiene bay is about the size of an airplane bathroom, complete with a waste management system that uses air suction to keep things moving in microgravity.
While the urine is eventually vented into the great abyss, the solid canisters must be "squished down" and hand-delivered back to Earth at the end of the mission.