Astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission reported detecting a strange burning odor coming from the spacecraft’s advanced $23 million toilet system, which had already experienced issues shortly after launch.
“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 Chrisna Koch, who repaired the system on Thursday, radioed to mission control on Saturday, Space.com reported.
Koch added that the source of the odor could not be definitively determined, explaining, “It was never identified as the source, what it exactly was, but it was identified as an unknown smell,” Koch said.
According to the crew, the odor resembled that of an old electric heater being used after sitting idle for a long period, the report noted.
NASA engineers on the ground initially theorized that the smell might be linked to orange insulation located on the hygiene bay door of the toilet system.
Despite the unusual issue, mission control approved continued use of the restroom and indicated there were no “major concerns” related to the odor, according to Space.com.
The latest development follows an earlier malfunction shortly after liftoff on April 1, when the urine hose in the spacecraft’s Upper Waste Management System failed but was quickly repaired by Koch the next day.
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