Toxic leak forces astronauts to evacuate space station module

A leak of the International Space Station's cooling system into the American module has prompted the crew to shelter in the Russian module.

|
NASA
Soyuz and Progress ships attached to the ISS. The Soyuz can be an emergency lifeboat in the last resort.

Sen—A toxic leak of chemicals inside the International Space Station (ISS) forced the evacuation of the crew from the American-built part of the station into the Russian segment, Russian space agency, Roscosmos announced Wednesday.

According to the agency's statement, the release of toxic chemicals from the station's cooling system took place around 11:44 Moscow Time on 14 January.

At this time, the US segment is isolated, the crew is safe and is sheltering in the Russian segment. The concentration of contaminants in the atmosphere of the Russian segment is within allowable limits, the statement said.

According to the chief of the Russian mission control, Maksim Matyushin, the safety of the crew was ensured thanks to cooperative and quick actions of cosmonauts and astronauts and support groups in Moscow and Houston.

"Further actions on the American segment should be developed by the US," Matyushin said, "Currently, Mission Control in Houston is analyzing the information about the status of the US segment."

The station's cooling system uses liquid ammonia to remove excess heat from various systems on board the outpost and radiate it into space. During the years of operation, the complex system proved to be maintenance-heavy and failure-prone and was a cause of several technical problems before, which required the intervention of the crew and even spacewalks.

However, US and Russian segments of the station have fully independent life-support and power-supply systems and can function autonomously. As a last resort, the six-member crew can board a pair of Soyuz spacecraft parked at the Russian segment and return to Earth as needed.

Related Links:

SpaceX delays next station cargo run to January

ISS astronauts celebrate the New Year sixteen times

Astronauts snare belated Christmas Dragon from space

Original story from Sen. © 2015 Sen TV Limited. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more space news visit Sen.com and follow @sen on Twitter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Toxic leak forces astronauts to evacuate space station module
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0114/Toxic-leak-forces-astronauts-to-evacuate-space-station-module
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe