Get unlimited access to everything VICE has to offer.

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

Artemis II Astronauts Are Getting a Major Space Toilet Upgrade (Crews of the Past Pooped in Bags)

Humans are heading back to the moon for the first time in decades, and thankfully, they won’t be doing it with Apollo-era restrooms.

Share on X (Opens in new window)X

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Facebook

Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard

Humans are going to be heading back to the moon for the first time in decades. Thankfully, they won’t be doing it with Apollo-era restroom facilities. By that I mean, 21st-century lunar astronauts won’t be pooping into bags.

Sourced from a vlog published on YouTube by the Canadian Space Agency, astronauts will finally have something resembling a real earthly bathroom. It’ll be fully equipped with an actual toilet, something Apollo astronauts only dreamed of.

NASA’s Artemis II Astronauts Are Getting a Toilet Upgrade After Decades of Poop Bags

NASA’s Artemis 2 mission won’t be landing on the moon’s surface. It’s only slated for a 10-day lunar flyby, but it does still mark a monumental return to a place humans once golfed on in the name of science. It is a scientific and exploratory throwback, but with some major technological advancements.

Where Apollo astronauts had to poop into plastic bags and keep them in condom-like urine cuffs in full view of their crewmates, Artemis 2 replaces that outdated system with a compact “hygiene bay” inside the Orion capsule, which is itself a spacecraft roughly the size of two minivans, shared by four people. Under those circumstances, you can imagine that privacy would be key, especially considering it’s a mixed-gender team.

Gone are the poop bags and kept condoms; in their place are a small toilet, a series of privacy options, and, perhaps most triumphantly, an actual door. The bathroom, about the size of a small, very cramped closet, is outfitted with a series of handles to keep the floating astronauts as stationary as possible. The toilet itself looks kind of like an oversized food-processing machine.

It’s not a wholly original system. It’s been adapted from the International Space Station’s Universal Waste Management system. As you can probably imagine, in microgravity, urine can be unwieldy to contain, so they’ve devised a system that uses air instead of gravity to direct waste, with individual urine funnels for each astronaut

A few times a day, astronauts will have to vent urine out into space. Solid poop waste is another matter. That gets deposited into bags, which are then filed away in a poop filing cabinet for storage until the astronauts return to Earth, where it will all be properly disposed of. The ISS has a much more complex recycling system for its waste, which the Artemis 2 mission doesn’t need since it’s so short.

If the system fails, astronauts will fall back on contingency gear that will essentially rocket them backward about 50 years to the toilet facilities used by the Apollo astronauts back in the 1970s. The Artemis two missions aren’t just about heading back to the moon to maybe, possibly one day think about putting a colony up there to extend America’s footprint to beyond our atmosphere. They’re also about discovering new ways to make space travel and potential space colonization more viable and comfortable.

Nobody’s going to want to live in a world where they have to neatly vacuum-seal all of their poops.

Share on X (Opens in new window)X

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Facebook

Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard

Dima_zel/Getty Images Artemis II Astronauts Are Getting a Major Space Toilet Upgrade (Crews of the Past Pooped in Bags) 2 minutes ago By Luis Prada

Artemis II Astronauts Are Getting a Major Space Toilet Upgrade (Crews of the Past Pooped in Bags)

Peepo/Getty Images Why Future Humans Will Struggle to Get Pregnant in Space 8 minutes ago By Luis Prada

Why Future Humans Will Struggle to Get Pregnant in Space

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 27: Trent Reznor performs with Nine Inch Nails during Boston Calling Music Festival on May 27, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images) Why the Nine Inch Nails Audiences Were a ‘Nightmare’ for This 1970s Rock Icon 21 minutes ago By Stephen Andrew Galiher

Why the Nine Inch Nails Audiences Were a ‘Nightmare’ for This 1970s Rock Icon

By Stephen Andrew Galiher

Goodboy Picture Company/Getty Images Being the ‘Chill Girl’ Ruined My Relationships: 4 Ways I Grew a Spine 38 minutes ago By Sammi Caramela

Being the ‘Chill Girl’ Ruined My Relationships: 4 Ways I Grew a Spine

Nintendo 64 – Yes, That N64 – Now Has an Open World Game as Big as Skyrim 55 minutes ago By Denny Connolly

Nintendo 64 – Yes, That N64 – Now Has an Open World Game as Big as Skyrim

Tijana87/Getty Images Gen Z Women Are Obsessed With Becoming Trad Wives 55 minutes ago By Sammi Caramela

Gen Z Women Are Obsessed With Becoming Trad Wives

4 Zodiac Signs Facing Major Relationship Tests With the Coming Full Moon 1 hour ago By Sammi Caramela

4 Zodiac Signs Facing Major Relationship Tests With the Coming Full Moon

Dzika Mrowka/Elifesra/Getty Images There’s a Full Pink Moon in April and a Blue Moon in May: How to See Both 1 hour ago By Ashley Fike

There’s a Full Pink Moon in April and a Blue Moon in May: How to See Both

Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment, WEBTOON Blizzard Drops New Overwatch: Undivided WEBTOON With Major Story Lore Expansion 1 hour ago By Brent Koepp

Blizzard Drops New Overwatch: Undivided WEBTOON With Major Story Lore Expansion

Keychron Q11 – Credit: Keychron Ergonomic Keyboards That Aren’t a Pain in Your You-Know-What (Wrists) 1 hour ago By Matt Jancer | Reviewed by Ysolt Usigan

Ergonomic Keyboards That Aren’t a Pain in Your You-Know-What (Wrists)

By Matt Jancer | Reviewed by Ysolt Usigan

Kill the ads for just $2 a month

VICE membership also gives you access to our very best writing and exclusive new documentaries.

Add your account details

© Vice