How do you keep organ chips “alive” in deep space?

Custom equipment inside Orion automatically controls temperature and feeds the AVATAR organ chips throughout the Artemis II mission.

Learn more about AVATAR: go.nasa.gov/4sWkqeA

The toilet broke again. Someone call the space plumber.

Mission Control Houston believes that a frozen vent is to blame, and have oriented Integrity so that the sun will warm this vent & melt the blockage.

This is not diminishing the Artemis II crew's views of Earth however. Commander astro Reid Wiseman: "It's just a truly remarkable sight".

When the toilet is out-of-action, the crew can make use of Collapsible Contingency Urinals (CCUs).

‍TOILET UPDATE: It is now available again.

Following ~2 hours of pointing the vent at the sun, whatever was blocking it appears to have melted, and a waste dump was conducted.

The crew can now dump the contents of their Contingency Urinals as required.

Not bad for a first day in space.

Yesterday, as they became closer to the Moon than the Earth, Commander Reid Wiseman and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen reflected on the feeling of the translunar injection burn. Rise, the zero-gravity indicator, hung out for the conversation as well.

Artemis II crew, we hear you loud and clear.

Inside Mission Control, engineers like Ami Killeen in the Orion Mission Evaluation Room are keeping a close eye on Orion’s communication systems, keeping us seamlessly connected with the crew as they continue their journey toward the Moon.

Data, delivered at the speed of light. 💫

Orion’s Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O) downlinked more than 100 gigabytes of data using laser communications. This image is just one of the many files transmitted. Learn more about O2O: go.nasa.gov/3O4FmRi

Update from mission control: this trajectory correction burn was also cancelled since the translunar injection was so precise 🎯 Our European Service Module continues to power Orion's journey around the Moon 🌕

‍TOILET UPDATE: Full Orion toilet functionality is expected to be restored in approximately 2 hours, according to Mission Control Houston.

Since the previous update, the toilet has been limited to Numbers 2s, allowing the stored waste in the tank to be vented into space.

In the meantime, the crew is continuing to use the Contingency Urinals for Number 1s.

Artemis II just hit the "two thirds" mark of the journey to the Moon.

During Flight Day 4, the astronauts aboard Orion went over plans to study the Moon during their upcoming lunar flyby and are currently practicing manually controlling the spacecraft.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen peers out the window of the Orion spacecraft on day 3 of the mission. The controls over the commander and pilot seats are illuminated in the foreground, but the cabin is otherwise dark to avoid unnecessary glares on the windows.

This black and white image of Earth was captured by the optical navigation sensor on the exterior of the Orion spacecraft on the first day of the Artemis II mission, as the four astronauts inside were traveling farther than any humans have ventured in more than 50 years.

The Orion spacecraft has a couple of backseat drivers.