Artemis II's $23 Million Toilet Now Releasing 'Burning Smell'

Mankind is about to fly around the moon for the first time in over half a century, but by far the biggest stumbling block of this entire mission has been the toilet.

The Orion capsule's toilet — which cost a cool $23 million — malfunctioned shortly after the mission got underway, but was quickly fixed by space plumber extraordinaire/astronaut Christina Koch.

Now, they've got a new problem, and it has to do with their space commode emitting the last smell you'd want if you're in a small capsule traveling through the vacuum of space.

Alright, maybe second last…

READ: THE ORION CAPSULE BATHROOM SEEMS LIKE A TOTAL NIGHTMARE EVEN IF IT'S FUNCTIONING PROPERLY

According to Space, mission specialist Jeremy Hanson radioed to mission control that there was a burning smell coming from the Orion space toilet.

"For me, it was some sort of burning odor, and then it was definitely in the hygiene bay," he said. "And when I opened up the hygiene bay, the rest of the crew could smell it pretty much immediately."

Artemis II's Orion capsule toilet continues to be a major point of discussion. (Getty Images)

First of all, I have just informed my wife that all the bathrooms in our home shall be henceforth referred to as "hygiene bays." I like that.

Much classier than what we used to call it: "The Sh-tter."

This smell, which Koch described as the kind of odor that you get "when you turn on a heater that's been sitting for a while," is something they'd want to get to the bottom of.

They reported a similar smell early in the mission, and Mission Control suggested that it was coming from the orange insulation around the toilet… I mean, hygiene bay.

The crew was told that it was business as usual as far as using the toilet, and that Mission Control had no "major concerns" about it.

That's great news. In fact, the biggest hiccup of this trip back to the moon being the toilet is a sign things are going well.