Have you ever taken off in a rental car on a long trip when a "trouble light" starts blinking on the dashboard? It happened onboard Artemis Two's Orion Spacecraft. It turned out that the onboard toilet was malfunctioning. Not a good start, but actually this mission was intended to be a shakedown cruise to find the bugs and fix any problems. Luckily, this wasn’t not a HUGE problem but it was a little more complicated than just jiggling the handle. According to NASA, Astronaut Christina Koch fixed a malfunctioning filter which unjammed the system. But before you start cracking jokes about how it was a good thing someone thought to take along a plunger, it was actually a sophisticated liquid separation filter that had jammed. It took six hours to sort out but Christina fixed the problem. Surprisingly, this is actually the first time there’s been a functional toilet onboard a spacecraft headed toward the moon. Let's just say the Apollo Missions waste management system was extremely crude. The Orion upgrade to flush plumbing was a little more expensive but worth it as long as they don't have to call in a plumber.
