Artemis II astronaut ‘had difficulty’ with Microsoft Outlook

Reid Wiseman (NASA) is on his second day of flight toward the Moon with pilot Victor Glover (NASA), mission specialist Christina Koch (NASA) and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (Canadian Space Agency CSA). They flew on the Orion spacecraft, leaving the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, towards the Moon at 5:35 a.m. April 2 (Hanoi time).

In a conversation with the Artemis II mission control center in Houston that was being livestreamed on NASA’s YouTube channel, Wiseman said he had encountered a problem related to a software called Optimus. However, he then raised a simpler concern: there were two Outlook processes running on his PCD, specifically on his Microsoft Surface Pro.

PCD stands for Personal Computing Device, a specialized laptop or tablet used by Artemis II astronauts to manage certain tasks such as accessing email during the 10-day mission to the Moon. According to WiredThe PCD is considered very important for the crew because it is the main device for interacting with mission data and communicating during historical flights.

“I have two Microsoft Outlook accounts, and both are not working. If you can remotely access Optimus as well as two Outlook accounts, that would be great,” Wiseman told the control center.

Immediately after Wiseman reported the problem, the center responded: “We have completed remote access to your PCD. We have resolved the problem for Optimus. But for Outlook, the account has shown offline status, this is normal.”

The communication then stopped. NASA has not yet commented, while Microsoft said it “will respond soon” on this issue.

Theo TechCrunchthis incident is quite small but is considered humorous, because it is not rare for similar cases to occur on Earth. This page questioned whether Wiseman installed third-party add-ons that conflicted with Outlook, even claiming that “someone sent a NASA livestream of the launch that was hours long, causing the account’s OneDrive capacity to exceed the limit.

Outlook being offline isn’t the only challenge astronauts face. Shortly after takeoff, their toilet broke down. Speaking to Space, NASA spokesman Gary Jordan said the ventilation fan of the toilet on board Orion was stuck, and the ground troubleshooting team is currently providing instructions on how to access the fan and clean this area.

Microsoft Outlook was born in 1997 and is one of the most popular email and work management applications in the world. Outlook doesn’t just stop at sending and receiving emails, Outlook gradually upgrades, helping to manage personal information such as calendars, contacts, task management or notes. The application also supports cross-platform synchronization, spam filtering capabilities, smart search and deep integration with other services in the Microsoft ecosystem such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Teams.

The above incidents are reminiscent of “the most expensive dash in history”. In 1962, NASA’s Mariner 1 spacecraft was intentionally destroyed after launch due to a guidance system error. The cause stems from a missing hyphen (-) character in the handwritten code that caused the Atlas Agena missile to deviate and receive the order to self-destruct after only 293 seconds of flight. The failure of this mission caused $18.5 million in damage, equivalent to more than $200 million today.