The four astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission are now over halfway to the Moon following Wednesday’s launch from Kennedy Space Center, but a familiar issue has returned.

Orion’s toilet has malfunctioned for the second time since liftof.

“During the night, we tried to vent the wastewater tank that’s attached to the toilet. We had problems with that, due to suspected blockage we think probably due to ice. So we directed the crew overnight to use their collapsible contingency urine devices,” Judd Frieling, the Artemis II flight director, explained during a news conference Saturday.

The astronauts faced a similar issue with the toilet on the mission’s first day.

The spacecraft’s lunar loo malfunctioned shortly after liftoff and has continued to be a persistent problem.

NASA’s deputy manager for the Orion program,
Debbie Korth, confirmed that the toilet remains functional.

” You know, this is a test flight. We’re figuring out how these systems work together, but it is operable, and we have redundancy to get us through the mission,” she said.

NASA confirmed that the toilet is still available for astronauts to use for solid waste.

“Space toilets and bathrooms are something everybody can really understand .. it’s always a challenge,” Korth said.

NASA stated that the astronauts reported a smell coming from the bathroom, which is located in the floor of the capsule.

“Regarding the smell, I just wanted to make sure you all were tracking the EGS notes of the kind of burning heater smell that was coming from toilet several times,” astronaut Christina Koch, who helped address the issue earlier this week, told mission control on Saturday, according to Space.com.

Orion is scheduled to orbit the Moon on Monday before returning to Earth.