Astronauts aboard NASA’s high-stakes Artemis II mission got a whiff of something alarming halfway to the moon — and it wasn’t just recycled air.
In a bizarre twist that sounds straight out of a sci-fi nightmare, the crew reported a mysterious burning smell coming from the spacecraft’s $23 million toilet system — yes, the toilet — raising fresh concerns after the same unit already malfunctioned shortly after liftoff.
“Regarding the smell… there was kind of a burning heater smell coming from the toilet several times,” astronaut Christina Koch radioed to Mission Control, according to Space.com.
That’s not exactly the kind of update anyone wants to hear while floating hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth.
The four astronauts, currently on a 10-day journey around the moon, described the odor as similar to an old electric heater that had been sitting unused — a strange and unsettling scent in the sealed environment of the Orion capsule.
Even more troubling? No one has been able to definitively identify what caused it.
“It was identified as an unknown smell,” Koch admitted in communications back to Earth.
Mission controllers initially suspected the issue could be linked to orange insulation inside the toilet’s hygiene bay door — but nothing has been confirmed, leaving the source of the smell a mystery.
Despite the unsettling situation, NASA has given the crew the green light to keep using the high-tech commode, insisting there are no “major concerns” at this time.
Still, the incident adds to a growing list of eyebrow-raising hiccups for the Artemis II mission.
Just hours after the spacecraft launched on April 1, the toilet’s urine hose — part of the so-called Upper Waste Management System — malfunctioned, forcing Koch to step in and fix it the very next day.
Now, with a strange burning smell lingering in the cabin and no clear explanation, the $23 million bathroom is becoming an unexpected headline-maker in one of NASA’s most ambitious missions in decades.
For a crew headed toward the moon, it’s not aliens or asteroids causing concern — it’s the toilet.
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This doesn\’t surprise me or ALOT of CITIZENS. What did you expect with NASA exactly something like that to happen. ❓
I hope they don\’t end up with a fire on the Artemis II and the astronauts will be safe and hopefully they can come back now instead of waiting for something to happen
And you had the nads to say that they panicked??? I’m going to call the lie on that one…they are professionals and they would be concerned but I guarandamntee you they didn’t panic. Just because YOU would have in that situation doesn’t mean that THEY did!