When Commander Jill T. Sparks attempted her routine morning “mission essential” aboard the ISS, she was met not with the usual satisfying flush, but a stubborn silence from the space toilet. According to the helpdesk ticket filed earlier this week, the toilet has apparently decided it was “too cool for conventional plumbing” and instead developed what Sparks described as a “black hole personality.”
The ticket, submitted with both bemusement and a tinge of desperation, detailed an incident where the toilet seemed to suck in everything except water, including a spare glove, a snack wrapper, and ironically, a printed copy of the station’s plumbing manual. “It’s like the thing thinks it’s a miniature singularity,” Sparks wrote, “and honestly, I’m half expecting it to start warping time or swallowing the coffee machine next.”
NASA’s ground team has reportedly been scratching their heads, with one technician remarking, “It’s the first time we’ve seen equipment embrace its inner astrophysics quite literally.” Initial troubleshooting attempts included rebooting the toilet’s control system and a heartfelt pep talk over comms reminding the unit that it is, in fact, just a toilet—not a celestial vortex.
In a subsequent update, Commander Sparks joked that the space toilet might soon request a “gravity upgrade” or petition for its own research grant to study event horizons. Until then, astronauts are advised to hold tight and wait for a fix, preferably before the next spacewalk.
Meanwhile, the helpdesk has marked the issue as “critical” with high cosmic urgency and assigned it to the “Zero-G Plumbing Division,” who are said to be both baffled and amused by their newest recruit in cosmic anomalies.