Astronauts evacuated after space station scare
Print Edition
ASTRONAUTS hurriedly evacuated the US section of the International Space Station and moved to its Russian module after a coolant problem emerged yesterday, but Russian and US officials insisted all six crew were not in any danger.
“The space station crew is safe,” NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said.
An alarm indicating a possible ammonia leak in the cooling system early yesterday prompted the crew to leave and seal off the American module, but further testing had NASA officials thinking it was just a sensor problem, NASA spokesman Mike Curie said.
Still, the crew planned to finish its work day in the Russian segment and sleep there overnight out of caution, Curie said. There’s enough room and food for them to stay there a week but that’s not likely to be necessary, he added.
The two space agencies differed on exactly what had occurred as the station orbited about 400 kilometers above the Earth. While the Russian space agency Roscosmos said there was a coolant leak, NASA said in a statement on its online television station there was still “no concrete data that suggests that there was, in fact, an ammonia leak.”
Russia’s Tass news agency said just about one-third of ammonia was left in the coolant system at the US module and the rest had leaked out. It quoted Roscosmos chief Oleg Ostapenko as saying the situation was still being examined but an “evacuation (of the entire station) is not on the agenda.”
NASA said the astronauts evacuated to the Russian module as a precaution.
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