Earlier this month, the Artemis II astronauts took the ultimate roadtrip: a flyby of the Moon, on which they brought the entire world along.
A livestream of their seven-hour closeup journey showcased the astronauts’ narration of what they could see, lunarside. And with the four-person U.S.-Canadian crew safely back on Earth now, NASA continues to upload stunning images of the astronauts’ work from afar.
Making the mission more remarkable is how the astronauts squeezed into a small space to get this done. The Orion spacecraft, while roomier than its Apollo ancestors, is roughly the size of a campervan on the inside. The crew needed to sleep, eat, drink, use the (sometimes broken) toilet and yes, perform science for 10 days in this tiny home. And not get on each other’s nerves in the meantime.
The astronauts attributed training and teamwork – both by their crew members, and their vast support teams on Earth – as to what kept them so focused on their mission that they were able to channel “moon joy.” But for those of us living in cramped spaces, what lessons learned can we take to support our own goals for tiny living spaces?
Making a place a home
To learn how, New Atlas spoke with Branelle Rodriguez, the Orion program’s vehicle manager for Artemis II, in the days before the historic mission’s April 1 launch. Her job was to make sure the spacecraft would be ready to host the four astronauts. And while the spacecraft was not accessible for a tour there at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in a small agency office near Cocoa Beach, Florida she gave us an audio walkthrough of what you would see if you were inside.
Rodriguez thinks of the spacecraft like a home. First impressions matter when you walk in for a test before taking off, she emphasized. The crew module “hatch,” which is the main entrance – as the other is used for emergencies – has a rowing-machine like “flywheel” just a step away, for exercise. And if you need a quick stop to the bathroom, the toilet is tucked into the floor for privacy, nearby a curtain you can pull to give yourself a bit of a barrier.
While Orion appears to have performed up to spec, the toilet will need some troubleshooting. The astronauts reported bizarre smells, and had issues flushing urine outside the spacecraft as designed. Sometimes the astronauts had to resort to their backup system, which is essentially storing stuff in tubes.
Plumbing is hard in a microgravity environment where there’s no up or down, and NASA says they don’t think freezing is to blame as they shone the sun on the panels above the plumbing, with little effect. Luckily, the planned Moon-landing is in 2028 and there is a test mission called Artemis III in Earth orbit before then, allowing engineers time to figure out fixes to the toilet issues before returning to the Moon.
Flexible thinking
Once you get past the entrance, what do you see? It depends on the phase of the mission. During launch and landing, when the seats were assembled, to the left of the entrance was the seat of the pilot (NASA’s Victor Glover) and commander (NASA’s Reid Wiseman).
“They're … sitting with beautiful displays and controls right over their heads there so that they can manually get to those if needed," said Rodriguez. "All the switches, all the controls, and everything else, and then above them … is also the windows. They'll be able to have a beautiful display of looking out either at the Moon, or looking at the Earth.”
So where did the other two astronauts sit? The mission specialists, NASA’s Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, were on the right-hand side, with Koch closest to the hatch. Then after the launch, the astronauts disassembled the seats and set up informal zones. These zones changed throughout the mission for sleeping, eating, taking pictures, calling home and of course, doing science.
“In this way, you kind of set up your space like in your car, right?” Rodriguez said. “‘This is my zone.’ So they'll have their sleeping space, their personal space. They'll be able to get hardware out.”
Space storage
The astronauts also made use of “stowage,” which is all the cabinets and storage spots in the spacecraft to let them grab and stash food, equipment and other items. Emergency equipment tended to be easier to reach, along with food for the long, first day in space that ended with the engine burn to take them to the Moon.
While food during flying days and science days was more grab-and-go, under Wiseman’s seat was a potable water dispenser that allowed the astronauts to wet food that flew with them as a powder. The astronauts discussed some of their menu items in a livestream with the International Space Station late in the mission: butternut squash, spicy green beans, sweet and sour chicken, and even Kona coffee – with cream, apparently, because who doesn’t need a little luxury a few hundred thousand miles away from home?
Clever storage was especially important during the lunar flyby, Rodriguez said, as the crew didn’t want to waste precious minutes trying to retrieve cameras, tablets, and other equipment when Moon observations were the priority.
“We have all this different hardware [easily] available to us,” she said of how packing went for that day, with the cameras poised within easy reach of the crew at all times. But a big key also came down to training, “to really help walk through” the procedures so that both the ground teams and the astronauts knew what they were capable of doing with the equipment and time that they had.
Finding flow
On the livestream, in front of the world, the astronauts’ science work simply flowed: “They’re spot-on, right?” Rodriguez said. But just like any stage performance, they rehearsed over and over again on Earth to get the little details right. “It also is an iteration process, because it's not on the first [try] you're going to get it,” she said.
To make sure nothing got lost in the excitement, NASA had procedures about where to stow things, with the equivalent of “AirTags” to keep track of individual items. This was also important for the return to Earth, because the agency didn’t want to overweight one side of the spacecraft with equipment and throw off the balance of the spacecraft during reentry and splashdown.
After arriving home, it took about an hour to get the crew out of their spacecraft, but their essentials were within reach. Rodriguez said seat pockets and cabinets nearby were full of the essentials, such as the satellite phone and radio.
The Orion team will spend the next few months talking about what went well, and what did not, to make things even more comfortable for Artemis III. NASA will also continue to lean on its experience operating other spacecraft, as well as the International Space Station, in thinking about what’s next for Orion. But Rodriguez said she did not anticipate too many large design changes looking ahead.
“The living, breathing, eating inside of the vehicle, and where everything is stored, is really the same,” she said. The biggest design change will be a docking area for Artemis III to practice linking up with a lunar lander, in Earth orbit. But aside from that, “you might have some minor configuration changes, based on feedback … but they shouldn't be significant enough that you notice.”
