Goodable

NASA just picked a solar scientist to become the agency's science chief. Nicola Fox, the former top scientist on the Parker Solar Probe mission, has been named as NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. In her previous role, Fox lead groundbreaking research on the sun, including a better understanding of solar wind and how it affects planets and satellites. Now, she'll be leading the charge overseeing some of the agency's most exciting and high-profile missions.
But that's not all - Fox will also be heading up a NASA study group on UFOs (that’s Unidentified Flying Objects). NASA chief Bill Nelson praised Fox's appointment, saying that she has been instrumental in making the complex world of heliophysics accessible to the public. With an annual budget of roughly $7 billion, the Science Mission Directorate plays a vital role in NASA's efforts to explore the mysteries of the universe, from probing for past life on Mars to studying distant galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Nicola Fox Just Became the First Female Head of Science at NASA

YR - good news paramedic

For Charlotte Stanford, fixing an ambulance is no longer just about getting a vehicle through the workshop. It means putting it back on the road to help someone in London.

The London Ambulance Service's first female mechanic said joining the service has given her a way to give back to her community after leaving a desk job in corporate PR.

Ms Stanford joined LAS as an apprentice more than a year ago. The 38-year-old had never had a manual job before and said she wanted a change.

"I knew I wanted to do something different and I didn't want to be behind a desk any more. And while I had no experience with cars, I have always been good at fixing things," she said to the BBC.

"Now, when I fix a vehicle and get it back on the road, I know it's going out to help someone and could save a life. That's a really nice feeling."

Ms Stanford is based at Fulham Ambulance Station and works in one of LAS's in-house workshops. The team services and MOTs ambulances and response cars, and carries out repairs so crews can respond to patients across the capital.

She said fault-finding on an ambulance can feel similar to the way a paramedic assesses a patient.

"When something is wrong with an ambulance, you are looking at all the symptoms, what it sounds like, what it looks like, even the smell," she said.

"We will start to investigate and try to work out the cause. A bit like a paramedic does with a patient.

"You use your experience, your senses and the diagnostic tools to piece it together and get to the root of the problem. And then we fix it."

Ms Stanford said her focus was always on getting vehicles safely returned to frontline duty as quickly as possible.

"We are always mindful of the responsibility we carry," she said. "We don't just fix the engines, we are responsible for maintaining much of the equipment too, like the stretchers, the chairs, the sirens and the blue lights.

"We take a lot of pride in what we do because we know how important these vehicles are."

Ms Stanford is currently the only woman in the mechanic team, something she said she hopes will change.

Although she is the first woman in the LAS's modern workshop, the service said she is not the only woman to have helped keep London's ambulances running.

During World War Two, women in the Auxiliary Ambulance Service drove the vehicles and treated patients, and many learned to carry out their own mechanical repairs on the fleet.

After the war, those women were encouraged to step aside for returning servicemen.

When a London-wide ambulance service was launched in 1965, women made up 6 percent of the workforce. Today, half of all staff at LAS are women.

Ms Stanford said she was proud of her role in the service and wanted other women to consider the work.

"I'm proud to be part of a team that keeps London moving and safe every day," she said.

"I would love more women to join our team. It's such a rewarding and fulfilling job and women should never doubt that they can do this work too."

📸 credit: LAS

London Ambulance Service’s First Female Mechanic Says Role Helps Her Give Back to the Community

WCCO CBS - John Lauritsen

At Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Faribault, hockey gets a lot of attention. It is not the whole story, but it is a big reason people know the school.

The school opened in 1858, the same year Minnesota became a state. Andrew Garlinski, the school's director of admission, said the campus still carries that history.

"When people drive through that arch and you see this campus, it takes your breath away," Garlinski said. "The history is in the walls. You can see it."

About 400 students currently attend classes at Shattuck-St. Mary's. If the school's history is any guide, some of them could go on to become well known. Former students include actor Marlon Brando and sportscaster Brent Musburger.

"We've got kids who are doctors and K-Pop stars and actors and musicians," Garlinski said.

Still, hockey is a major part of the school's public identity. Shattuck-St. Mary's has banners and big names tied to its hockey program, but one of the clearest signs of that history sits inside a skate sharpening shack at the sports complex.

The shack is known as "Rooster's Coop," and the man who runs it is Steve Erickson, better known as Rooster. He has held the job since 1992. Over those years, he has watched student-athletes grow into professional hockey players.

"Zach Parise, Kyle Okposo, Chris Porter. Phil Esposito, the best. He's the best guy ever, too," Rooster said.

Rooster has not only seen those players come through. He said he got to know some of them personally, and that connection shows up all over the walls of the Coop.

"I've actually got signatures from JP, his other son Jordy and Zach. I've got all three Parises covered," Rooster said, while pointing at an autographed JP Parise jersey.

Over time, Rooster's Coop has turned into a small museum of hockey history. The space is packed with pucks, signatures and skates. Rooster said one friend gave him a 1980 Herb Brooks U.S. Olympic jacket after the team won the gold medal.

"Herb was here all the time. One of my prize possessions I have in here. Herb came here and he did camp," Rooster said. "He hung out with us. Went to the bars with us. Played men's league with us on Sunday nights."

Even with all that on display, Rooster said there is much more at home. He has hundreds of jerseys stored there, far beyond what fits inside the Coop.

"There are jerseys behind jerseys. There's stuff behind stuff," Rooster said.

Some of the names connected to the school are among hockey's biggest. Rooster said players like Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews were still kids when he first knew them. He said they have not forgotten him.

He is not known for goals, power plays or penalty kills. He is known for the role he has played around the rink and for the relationships he has kept over the years. Rooster said that is showing up in a new way now, as former campers return with their own families.

"It's turning around now where those guys are coming back with their kids. So, I had those guys here when they were kids and now their kids are coming to camp, so it's kind of cool," Rooster said.

Rooster also serves as the manager of the Shattuck-St Mary's Sports Complex. He usually works in the evenings, and he said anyone is welcome to stop by the Coop and say "hi."

 📸credit: WCCO

How Rooster’s Coop Became a Hockey Museum and Helped Make a Legendary Minnesota Hockey School

The Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital just released heartwarming footage of 2-year-old Crew Dearth walking down a hospital hallway to claps after his victory over liver cancer.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, Crew was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer in March 2025.

“We just could not believe our baby had cancer. If I was standing up, I would have fell to the ground,” said Crew’s mom, Nicole.

After it was announced that Crew would need a liver transplant, his aunt, Taylor, was found to be a match.

“Often, organs for transplants come from deceased donors, but the liver is the only organ that can regenerate. That means it’s possible for a living donor to safely give a portion of their liver to someone in need,” the clinic wrote.

“I never thought about being a living organ donor for someone until Crew’s diagnosis, but I am so happy I got the chance to do so.” said Crew’s aunt.

Footage here shows the two-year-old walking with his family before ringing the bravery bell, celebrating the end of his cancer treatment.

📸 Cleveland Clinic via Storyful

This 2-Year-Old Beat Liver Cancer Thanks to a Transplant From a Living Donor

Smithsonian Magazine

It started with one building, then another, then another. More than 20 years later, truck driver Joe Macken’s handmade New York City has ended up in a museum.

In 2004, Macken created a miniature replica of 30 Rockefeller Plaza out of balsa wood. He had planned to stop there.

“Then the next day, I built another one,” he tells CBS News’ Steve Hartman. “And then I built another one.”

He kept going for more than two decades. Macken worked his way through Manhattan and then started on the other boroughs, making 320 sections that each represented about a square mile of New York. He filled them with wooden buildings, painted parks and tiny artificial trees. When he ran out of space at home, he rented a storage unit.

The result was a 1,350-square-foot model depicting New York City in its entirety. Last summer, the work went viral on TikTok, where many commenters said it belonged in a museum.

In February, that happened. Macken’s model went on display at the Museum of the City of New York in an exhibition called “He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model.” Visitors can view it from all sides and use binoculars for a closer look at specific neighbourhoods.

Elisabeth Sherman, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director, described what happened when staff first saw it.

“We were all standing around squealing, ‘Look, there’s our museum!’ ‘There’s the Met; there’s the Guggenheim,’” Sherman recalls to the Guardian’s Alaina Demopoulos. “It’s this great act of recognition, and then it’s also witnessing [Macken’s] creativity, how he made this complex architecture out of very humble materials.”

Macken makes his living driving a delivery truck in Clifton Park, New York, where he has lived with his family since 2003, according to the Times Union’s Paul Grondahl. From more than 150 miles away, he missed New York City.

“I wanted to keep it with me,” he tells the New York Times’ John Freeman Gill. “So I figured I’d better build it.”

His interest in city models goes back much further. In first grade, Macken went on a school field trip to the Queens Museum, where he saw The Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335-square-foot model made for the 1964 World’s Fair. More than 100 people spent three years constructing that model from materials including wood, plastic, paper, brass and foam.

“Now, you walk around it and get an aerial view. Back then, you sat on a train or a tram, and you went around it,” Macken tells Artnet’s Sarah Cascone. “And I just remember just going around it and thinking, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do.’”

About three decades later, he made the model of 30 Rockefeller Plaza that started his own long-running project. In the years after that, he worked on the models almost every day.

“I was just going to look at it,” he tells CBS News. “I don’t know what I was going to do. I had no plans. I mean, I never imagined it being in a museum.”

Macken eventually extended the model beyond the five boroughs to include parts of New Jersey and Nassau County on Long Island. The materials, including Elmer’s glue, acrylic paint and balsa wood cut with an X-Acto knife, cost about $20,000, the Times reports.

The museum says the work captures the city at an extraordinary level of detail. Macken’s 1:2,400-scale model reportedly includes nearly a million structures, including every building, stadium, street and bridge in New York City.

Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, the museum’s director and president, says in a statement that the model “reflects the wonder and complexity of this city through the eyes of someone who has lived it, loved it and painstakingly rebuilt it.”

For Sherman, part of the point is that people can find their own place in it.

“One of the reasons Joe is so insistent that every single building is here is because he would never want someone to come and see it and not be able to find where they live and see their story,” Sherman tells Artnet.

“He Built This City: Joe Macken’s Model” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York through the summer of 2026.

📸 credit: Joe Macken

Truck Driver Spends 20 Years Building Scale Model of Every New York City Building — Now, It's on Display

Talker News

A Scottish palace with centuries of royal history is getting ready to welcome visitors again, this time as it marks 60 years of opening its doors to the public.

Scone Palace, where the Kings of Scotland were crowned between 1249 and 1651, will reopen on April 1 for its anniversary year.

For centuries, the site was home to Scone Abbey and the Stones of Scone. In 1488, James IV became the penultimate king to be crowned at Scone. During the Reformation in 1559, a mob burned down the Abbey.

After that damage, Scone Palace became a private home. It passed to the Ruthven family until their alleged involvement in a conspiracy against James VI.

The palace then passed to the family of the Earl of Mansfield, who still own it today. For the past 60 years, the interior and grounds have been open to the public.

The palace receives more than 100,000 visitors each year.

A representative from Scone Palace said, "With over one hundred thousand visitors every year and known as The Crowning Place of Scottish Kings, the team have been busying preparing the Palace for the busy months ahead."

"To celebrate our 60th Anniversary year of welcoming visitors a new membership has been launched - ‘Pay for a day, Visit for a Year’ - meaning there has never been a better time to explore this historical building and beautiful grounds."

"The Palace & Gardens are open seven days a week and are offering every visitor a free annual membership with every purchase of a Palace & Gardens entry ticket, meaning they can return to visit as many times as they wish for a full year. Discover stunning Palace rooms in the ancestral home of the Murrays of Scone and Earls of Mansfield."

This Palace is Reopening for its 60th Anniversary With Free Year-Long Visitor Passes

USA Today

A kangaroo that escaped from a petting zoo in Necedah, Wisconsin, was finally found after three days on the lam.

Chesney the kangaroo escaped from his home at Sunshine Farm - Necedah, prompting a community-wide search.

“BOLO: Only in Wisconsin would we wake up to ‘Have you seen this kangaroo?’” the Juneau County Sheriff’s Office wrote in an appeal to the community on March 26. “Yes, Chesney the kangaroo has pulled a full-on prison break from Sunshine Farm in Necedah. Last seen bouncing through the area of 23rd & 9th like he’s training for the Olympics. His owners are out searching with a drone, which feels like peak 2026 energy — but honestly, whatever helps get this handsome guy home. Most importantly, Chesney is likely scared, so please be careful with him. Please don’t challenge him to a boxing match,” the office wrote.

Locals reported Chesney sightings to Sunshine Farm over the next few days. Then, the drone company spotted the young roo
“sleeping under a pine tree” using a thermal drone in the early morning hours on Saturday, but said they were unsuccessful in capturing him. Finally, later that day he was found safe and caught.

Videos filmed by Chesney’s owner, Debbie Marland, show the moment he cautiously approached and was finally captured. Another video shows Chesney safe at home and eating alongside a fellow kangaroo resident.

“We were packing up because there were no sightings of him all morning while we were looking, and out of nowhere little man appeared at my car door…. Stacy so patiently waited for him to approach her, and he basically brought his face to hers to sniff her and gave her a kiss. She scooped him up and the rest is history. He is home safely and taking the biggest nap after some food. He is not hurt and looks healthy as can be,” Marland wrote on the farm’s Facebook page.

credit: Sunshine Farm - Necedah via Storyful

Escaped Kangaroo Found Safe in Wisconsin After 72-Hour Search

People

A graduation photo shoot turned into something Lucky Asker says she will never forget.

The 26-year-old Ohio mom had planned to mark her Ohio State University graduation with photos alongside her son, Idrees, who was 11 months old at the time. Instead, she ended up capturing one of his biggest milestones, too.

In a video shot by photographer Brenna Marie and shared on Instagram, Idrees is seen taking his first steps as Asker adjusts her cap before a photo.

“It felt completely unreal. For a second, I didn’t even process what was happening. I was just watching him like, ‘Wait… is this really it?’ ” Asker tells PEOPLE. “In that moment, it felt like everything paused, and at the same time, everything flashed through my mind. All the little moments him as a newborn, the long nights, his first crawl, all of it. It hit me how much he’s grown in such a short time.”

Asker graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Public Health and a specialization in Sociology. She had welcomed Idrees before her last semester, and she said having him at the shoot felt right.

Reflecting on the moment, Asker says it still makes her “emotional” to think about how quickly he has grown since he was born.

“It was such an emotional moment,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was already celebrating my graduation, and then to see him take his first steps right then, it just made everything feel even more meaningful and so, so special.”

Asker says the moment felt like she and her son, now 20 months old, were each moving into something new at the same time.

“It felt like two milestones happening at the same time, me closing one chapter of my life by graduating, and my son beginning a new one by taking his first steps. It’s something I’ll always hold onto because it represents how much we both grew during that time,” she tells PEOPLE. “It really felt like we were both taking our first steps, just in different ways. In a way, it feels like we grew up together.”

“As he was learning how to walk, I was learning how to become a mom, how to keep going, and how to step into a new version of myself,” she adds. “That moment means everything to me, it’s definitely something I’ll be reminding him of when it’s his turn to graduate one day.”

The graduation itself came after what Asker described to PEOPLE as a difficult stretch. She said she balanced school, an internship and first-time motherhood while finishing her degree.

“After giving birth, I had a long labor that ended in a C-section, and shortly after being discharged, I had to be readmitted to the hospital due to postpartum preeclampsia. Postpartum is already such a vulnerable time, and navigating a health complication on top of recovery made things even more challenging,” she shares.

She said she tried to finish as much coursework as possible before coming home so she could focus on her son, and when that did not happen, she worked after he went to sleep.

“There were long days and moments where I felt overwhelmed, but at the same time, it gave me so much purpose,” she continues. “I tried to complete as much of my coursework as I could before coming home, so that when I was with him, I could be fully present. And on days when that wasn’t possible, I would finish everything after he went to sleep. Looking back, it was one of the most challenging periods of my life, but also one of the most meaningful.”

Asker, who shares Idrees with partner Charles Cartwright, 29, said her son became her “biggest motivation” during that period. She also said being a first-generation immigrant pushed her to finish her degree.

“On the days when I felt exhausted or overwhelmed, I would remind myself why I started and who I was doing it for,” explains Lucky, who says her status as a first-generation immigrant also pushed her to stay the course and get her degree. “I wanted to build a better future for both of us and show him what it looks like to keep going, even when things are hard. He gave everything I was doing a deeper meaning.”

She said support from her family also mattered.

“I also wouldn’t have been able to do it without my support system , my husband and my family, especially my sisters , who stepped in and helped me so much along the way,” she adds.

For other moms thinking about higher education, Asker told PEOPLE to give themselves grace and take things one day at a time.

“It’s not always going to be easy, and there will be moments where you feel overwhelmed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” she says. “Looking back, I even had to split my semester because I was going through so much, and that taught me that it’s okay to recognize when your cup is too full. You don’t have to do everything all at once. And honestly, if I hadn’t made that decision, I might not have even had this moment captured these videos and photos of my son taking his first steps.”

 📸credit: @thebmariephoto

Ohio Mom Celebrates College Graduation as Baby Son Takes First Steps During Photo Shoot

GoodGoodGood

What do children need when everything else has been stripped back? For London-based photographer Alexander Meininger, that question led to Playrise, a new nonprofit making modular, packable play equipment and furniture for children living in disaster zones and refugee camps.

Meininger said he started paying closer attention to playgrounds after having children of his own. A tinkerer by nature, he built his sons an indoor treehouse, but he said he did not fully grasp the role of play until the war in Ukraine, when he saw footage of children being displaced from their homes, schools and stability.

Playrise has now launched with a system of play structures designed with architecture studio OMMX. The structures use simple wooden components that can be assembled easily and adapted with accessories, including monkey bars, hammocks, basketball hoops and climbing ropes.

The system is designed to be fully customizable. Structures can be reconfigured to suit each location’s needs and limits, parts can be replaced easily, and the bolts that hold everything together use playground-specific hardware.

Meininger and his team also spoke with Sudanese, Palestinian and Eritrean child refugees to ask what children living in displacement actually wanted.

That feedback aligned with the group’s view of play’s role in children’s lives.

“In communities such as refugee camps, many children are displaced from home, living with trauma, cut off from education and essential healthcare, and suffering from high degrees of physical and psychological stress as a result,” Playrise writes on its website.

“In such circumstances, play is a lifeline, helping children relieve stress, foster nurturing relationships, and re-establish conditions in which learning can occur.”

Meininger first wanted to make the structures from rubble found in war and disaster zones. He later decided communities needed something “affordable, quick, and easy to assemble,” he told The Guardian.

“Just like when you’re renting, you don’t want bespoke furniture, you need something from Ikea, in refugee camps, there is no appetite for anything permanent,” Meininger added. “The problem is that a lot of people end up in this temporary accommodation for a depressingly long time.”

He then set out to create a system that could be scaled up and easily replicated, while still feeling personal and joyful for each refugee community.

Meininger, OMMX engineers and other developers travelled to Aysaita in Ethiopia, which will be the first refugee camp to receive a Playrise prototype. The source text says 10,000 children under the age of 10 are housed there, and there is not a single playground.

The team also spoke with children in two locations in Egypt that are hubs for displaced Palestinian and Sudanese refugees. They held co-design workshops with children and interviewed their parents.

In the Aysaita refugee camp, which has operated since 2007, families reported that children even helped construct sample play structures sent out for testing.

“We’re equipping them with the practical skills they will one day need in order to build and maintain their own homes,” Hikaru Nissanke, director of OMMX, told The Guardian. “This struck us as poignant, given the precarity with which they’re living.”

The designs are intended to be simple to assemble while still focusing on safety. The team chose timber instead of metal so materials would not become too hot in desert climates. They also designed the structures to stop fingers getting stuck, and created options that can sit securely on terrain ranging from desert sand to concrete.

“The simple modular kit comprises elements that allow for play for different ages, abilities, personalities, and settings. Some configurations focus on dynamic movement and popular games, others on more intangible forms of sensory play,” the Playrise website says.

“With our system, children can create a playground, a theatre, a tunnel, or simply a safe space to call their own.”

All frameworks and add-ons can be assembled with standard tools. Playrise hopes to offer international aid organizations a “menu” of playground parts and structures that can be deployed in the areas where they work.

“We didn’t want to go into this with a western perspective of what kids should do, or be patronizing,” Nissanke said. “But from the countries I’ve visited, I’ve seen that, on a basic level, humans are humans, and they wish for the same things. One of those things is that they want to see their kids thrive and play.”

Playrise representatives told Dezeen that after Ethiopia, refugee camps in Cairo and Wadi Karkar will be next.

“Where we are born is arbitrary, but our right to play safely should be fundamental.”

📸 credit: Lewis Ronald for Playrise

This Modular Playground is Bringing Safe Play Spaces to Children in Refugee Camps

Euro News

It starts in a garage and ends with the iPhone.

A new Apple Museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, opens today with a retelling of the company’s first 50 years, from its earliest machines in the 1970s to the devices that later shaped personal computing.

Visitors begin by walking into a recreation of the garage often linked to Apple’s early days, where Steve Jobs and his friend and co-founder Steve Wozniak formally registered Apple Computer Company on 1 April 1976.

“The museum is set up in a way that when you enter, you start in the garage, which is where it all began, and it's not so that it was their headquarters, but it tells a lot about the two people that founded Apple, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, and what the basis is of their vision behind the products,” museum founder Ed Bindels said.

The museum then takes visitors through Apple’s history, with displays on how the company’s logo changed over time and how its design language developed.

“So, step-by-step, we'll tell them things about how the logo developed, about the design language they use. So, I hope when people leave this museum, they know more about Apple and if they use an Apple product, they look differently at that product, that's what we hope,” Bindels said.

The collection includes the original Macintosh, later Apple devices, and one of the museum’s headline pieces, the Apple I.

The Apple I was Apple’s first product. Wozniak designed and hand-built it, and it was released in 1976. It is widely seen as the starting point of the company’s rise from a small startup to one of the most influential technology brands in history.

At the time, Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator to help fund the computer’s creation.

The machine looked very different from what buyers expect from a computer now. It was sold as a bare motherboard, and customers had to add the remaining parts themselves.

“So, normally a computer would have a keyboard and everything, but they just sold the motherboard, and you had to add your own keyboard and there were interfaces to connect them," Apple Museum board member Antonie de Kok said.

That stripped-back beginning is also part of what now makes the Apple I such a sought-after item. Only a small number still exist, and the surviving machines have become highly valuable collector’s pieces.

“These are unique. They are very valuable. One has just been sold for more than $1 million, because there are only a few left. It's the start of Apple as we all know it now. This was the first thing they ever developed,” de Kok said.

Museum officials say the site is Europe’s largest Apple Museum. The collection holds more than 5,000 items, including computers, posters, iPads, iPhones and other Apple products.

Only part of that collection is on display.

“We are showing less than 10 percent of what we have in total, because we have a big collection. But we want the products to support the story, and we don't want to have the products as the main star. So, they are here to tell the story, and that's why we select only a few items,” de Kok said.

The museum’s final section focuses on the iPhone, tracing Apple’s path from the garage display at the entrance to a device that changed communication, design and everyday life over 50 years.

Utrecht’s Apple Museum officially opens to the public on 2 April.

📸 credit: Apple Museum

Netherlands’ New Apple Museum Opens With Rare Apple I and 5,000 Tech Artefacts

Scientific American

For astronauts heading around the moon, one upgrade is unusually down to Earth. NASA’s Artemis II crew will have a toilet with a door, a system that can take urine and feces at the same time, and hardware designed for both male and female astronauts.

That is a long way from Apollo.

When astronauts first flew to the moon, they did so without a toilet. The Apollo program relied on plastic bags and funnels, a setup that crew members later described in a NASA report as “objectionable” and “distasteful.” More than half a century after those lunar flights and their toilet troubles, the four astronauts on Artemis II are set to fly with NASA’s Universal Waste Management System, or UWMS.

The system was built to fix long-running problems astronauts have faced in space and to make the experience feel a bit closer to a bathroom on Earth. NASA says the Artemis II version includes handles to help astronauts stay steady in microgravity, a system that can process urine and feces simultaneously, urine-collection devices for both male and female astronauts, and a door that offers some privacy inside the small Orion crew capsule.

The design has been in development for more than a decade. Collins Aerospace entered a contract with NASA in 2015 to develop the project. Since then, scientists working on the system have tackled problems seen in earlier space toilets while also aiming for a design that could be adapted for future moon and Mars missions.

“I think of waste management as an evolution of design,” says Melissa McKinley, project manager and principal investigator for NASA’s UWMS team. “The toilet has built on designs from Apollo, the space shuttle and even the International Space Station.... There is so much learning that goes into it.”

Apollo’s setup was rough. Inside the cramped crew capsules, astronauts had to strap adhesive-rimmed plastic bags and tubes to themselves to defecate or urinate. In weightless conditions, even attaching the bags was difficult. After using them, astronauts had to manually mix in a packet of germicide to stop bacteria and gases from building up inside the sealed bag.

The system also leaked.

During Apollo 10, astronauts spotted “a turd floating through the air.” During Apollo 8, the crew had to chase blobs of vomit and feces that had escaped into the cabin. A NASA report released after the Apollo missions said waste disposal “must be given poor marks” for crew satisfaction.

Astronaut Ken Mattingly was blunt about it during Apollo 16.

“I used to want to be the first man to Mars,” he said after describing the system. “This has convinced me that, if we got to go on Apollo, I ain’t interested.”

Those reviews pushed NASA to come up with something better. David Munns, a science and technology historian at the City University of New York, said the stakes are high because “the toilet is a ‘mission-critical’ system, so if it breaks down, the whole mission is in jeopardy.”

Before the space shuttle program, NASA engineers developed a toilet that could operate in low gravity. It looked more like a standard toilet on Earth, but astronauts still had to strap themselves in and use a vacuum hose so waste would not float back into the spacecraft.

That vacuum-based approach carried over into the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The two systems worked in similar ways, but there was one major difference. The ISS system recycled some wastewater, while the shuttle version vented it into space.

They were a big step up from Apollo’s bags and funnels, but they still had limits. They were not built with female anatomy in mind. They could not process urine and feces at the same time. And while they offered some privacy with a curtain, they did not have a solid door.

NASA’s UWMS was built as the latest answer to those problems. It is 3D-printed from titanium, and NASA says its lightweight, standardized design makes it easier to fit into different spacecraft. That includes the ISS, Orion for the Artemis missions, and future vehicles that have not yet been built.

The first version of the UWMS was tested on the ISS in 2020, and final installation was completed in 2021. That version included separate urine and feces systems that could be used simultaneously, changes to make the equipment more unisex, and the bathroom door.

NASA later modified the design so it could work on a lunar mission, then installed a version in Orion for Artemis II, the first crewed launch of the Artemis program. Scientists on the UWMS project are now waiting to hear how the four astronauts rate it after the mission.

“I am very excited for the crew to use this,” McKinley says. “We’ll know so much more when this mission comes back.... It’s really going to drive [waste management] on future Artemis missions and the lunar campaign, as well as the Mars campaign to come.”

📸 credit: NASA/JSC/James Blair

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