Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work

In 1969, the three astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission conducted a momentous “dress rehearsal” for putting humans on the lunar surface for the first time. It was a historic, inspiring moment for humanity; Astronaut John Young watched from a command module spacecraft as Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan broke away and flew a lunar module within 10 miles of the moon’s surface, then reunited to return home to Earth. It’s from this mission that we have one of the most powerful transcripts in NASA history: “Who did what?” Young asked. “Where did that come from?” Cernan added.“Give me a napkin quick,” Stafford said. “There’s a turd floating through the air.”The provenance of the poop remains one of the great mysteries of spaceflight. Today, in the early Earth-morning hours of the Artemis II astronauts’ history-mirroring mission around the moon, we have another: Why is Microsoft Outlook not working in space? On April 1, four astronauts from the U.S. and Canada embarked on a 10-day flight to loop around the moon. Spotted by VGBees podcast host Niki Grayson on the NASA livestream of live views from the , around 2 a.m. ET, Kennedy Space Center mission control acknowledges an issue with a process control system and offers to remote in—yes, like how your office IT guy would pause his CoD campaign to log into Okta for you because you used the wrong password too many times. One of the astronauts, Reid Wiseman, says that’s chill, but while they’re in there: “I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working.” right now the astronauts are calling houston because the computer on the spaceship is running two instances of microsoft outlook and they can’t figure out why. nasa is about to remote into the computer— niki grayson (@nikigrayson.com) 2026-04-02T06:06:53.835ZAstronauts are trained for decades in some of the most physically and mentally grueling environments of any career. They’re some of the smartest people on the planet, and they have to be, before we strap them to 3.2 million pounds of jet fuel and make them do complex experiments and high-stakes decisions for days on end. And yet, once they get up there, fucking Outlook is borked. I scanned through the next several minutes after this moment and didn’t hear them address the duplicate Outlooks again. So, I emailed the Artemis II communications team, who is definitely not busy today I’m sure, and asked: Can the astronauts check their email yet?I’ll update if I hear back.