Contingency Collapsible Urinals

The Contingency Collapsible Urinals (CCUs) became the Artemis II crew’s primary waste solution on the morning of Day 4 after a suspected ICE blockage seized the Orion spacecraft’s wastewater vent system. Flight controllers reoriented the spacecraft to let sunlight thaw the pipe; the crew reverted to CCUs until the line cleared by early afternoon on 4 April 2026.

CCUs are disposable, folding funnel-and-bag devices carried on crewed spacecraft as a backup to the primary Waste Collection System. They do not require power or plumbing and can be sealed and stowed. A predecessor device was used on the Space Shuttle during emergency situations. The Orion WCS has now experienced three distinct anomalies in five days: a fan failure, a separate vent fault, and the ICE blockage that triggered CCU use.

The recurrence of Orion toilet faults highlights a design constraint in long-duration crewed capsules: waste management on a week-long mission profile is significantly harder to make reliable than on an orbital station with sustained maintenance access.