Vlog 18: The lunar loo – or going to the bathroom during a mission to the Moon

Uploaded on October 22, 2025

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Vlog 18: The lunar loo – or going to the bathroom during a mission to the Moon

In this vlog, CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen takes a deep dive into one of the questions that astronauts are most frequently asked: how they go to the bathroom in space. Take a tour of Orion's toilet to learn about how business is done, waste is managed and privacy is ensured in a campervan-size space capsule with four astronauts.  (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA, Fulwell 73 UK Limited)

The one place that we can go during the mission where we can actually feel like we’re alone for a moment.

So here’s a little tour of our toilet trainer. So this would be the floor of the Orion capsule. We have it set up here like this so that we can practise in gravity. But this would be the door.  

So if you were looking at the toilet from inside the capsule, this would be the floor. You would float over to it. Open up this hinging door. And float on in.

So here you can see the toilet, and there’s enough room for you to float in here. And close the door.

This is just the toilet that we use for training and mocking up things, to get a perspective on how we’re going to manage this system on orbit.

You have a urine hose. So this is where you collect all your urine, and then this is just like a toilet seat. And this is where the solid waste is collected.

The feces get sucked down into the bottom, into a bag, and you close that off and you squish it down into the bottom, into the canister.

During the mission, we’ll have to change out that solid waste canister a few times, and all of that comes back to Earth with us.

As far as the urine goes, it gets collected. And a few times a day, we vent that urine to space.

We’re pretty fortunate as a crew to have a toilet with a door, on this tiny spacecraft – the one place that we can go during the mission where we can actually feel like we’re alone for a moment.

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