Astronauts returned to the US portion of the International Space Station after a false alarm triggered a partial evacuation of the orbiting laboratory.
All six crew members moved to the station’s Russian section early on Wednesday after a warning suggested trouble with a coolant-pressure system on the US side that could have indicated a dangerous ammonia leak, NASA said in a statement on its Web site. The agency later said an error message in the computer relay system might have triggered the alarm.
The crew members were never in danger, NASA said.
Photo: Reuters
While no ammonia was detected, the astronauts donned protective masks when re-entering the US segment at 3:05pm New York time, the agency said.
The precautions were taken because an ammonia leak in the cabin could lead to costly mission complications or loss of life, said Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut who served as space station commander for six months until early 2005.
While an internal ammonia leak has not yet happened on the station, Chiao called it a “nightmare scenario.”
“If you’ve got ammonia coming into the cabin, you’ve got a toxic atmosphere,” Chiao, a consultant and teacher, said in a telephone interview. “If it was serious enough, you could have a situation where you need to evacuate the crew and the station is crippled. It could eventually cascade to where you could lose the station.”
After the alarm went off at about 4am, crew members sealed the affected section and cut power to some equipment, NASA said.
The crew includes two US astronauts, Commander Barry Wilmore and Flight Engineer Terry Virts. After the evacuation, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who has been aboard the station since November last year, tweeted: “We’re all safe & doing well in the Russian segment.”
The other three astronauts manning the station are Russians.
The scare might result in minor delays to some research activities, including an experiment involving fruit flies, but no research was jeopardized, NASA said.
While the station has 388m3 of habitable space, fitting everyone into the Russian segment would be tight, Chiao said.
“It’s livable,” he said. “It’s nothing you want to do long term.”
While the sensors on the space station are generally reliable, they occasionally give false readings, Chiao said.
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