The Artemis II mission has left Earth orbit to fly around the moon without any major hiccups, but the crew on board the Orion spacecraft encountered an issue familiar to most office workers: trouble logging into Microsoft Outlook.
On the first day of the 10-day mission, a radio exchange between Commander Reid Wiseman and Houston Mission Control caught the attention of a Bluesky user and went viral. (You can watch or listen to the stream on YouTube.)
Wiseman had reached out to Houston for help with issues he faced on his personal computing device (PCD), a Microsoft Surface Pro. An engineer responded, saying the issue may lie with the Optimus software on his PCD and that they could resolve it by remotely connecting to the device.
Wiseman gave them the nod and mentioned the other problem he had run into. “I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working. If you want to remote in and check Optimus and those two Outlooks, that would be awesome,” he said.
About an hour later, the crew of four received an update from Houston. The remote connection ended, and the issues were resolved. “We were able to resolve the issue for Optimus, and for Outlook, we were able to get it open. It will show offline, which is expected,” a person said.
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Troubles on the PCD aren’t likely to hurt the mission. As Tom’s Hardware reports, mission-critical systems run on radiation-hardened hardware and dedicated software.
Outlook isn’t the only thing that troubled the four astronauts. The Orion spacecraft’s toilet fan had been jammed for a while. Thankfully, the crew on board was able to get it up and running again. (The incident reminded me of an episode from CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, when Howard Wolowitz’s Zero-Gravity Waste Disposal System had a similar malfunction.)
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Jibin is a tech news writer based out of Ahmedabad, India. Previously, he served as the editor of iGeeksBlog and is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex information for a broader audience.