It smells of burned plastic, a smoke detector activates its signal: 400 kilometers above the ground, the alarm went off on board the ISS at night.
[Moscow -] Rauch has triggered an alarm signal in a Russian segment on the International Space Station.
The Russian space agency Roskosmos announced that a smoke alarm went on in the “Zvezda” (“star”) module during the automatic charging of batteries on Thursday night at 03.55 CEST.
In a live stream from the US space agency NASA, cosmonaut Oleg Nowizki could also be heard describing the smell of burned plastic. The smell moved to the American part of the ISS, which flies around 400 kilometers above the earth.
At first it was unclear where the smoke and smell came from. In order to prevent possible smoke pollution, according to Roskosmos, a filter was switched on to clean the air. Cosmonaut Novitsky later stated that an air measurement had shown no contamination. All systems worked normally, the crew could go about their daily routine, assured Roskosmos.
As planned, the cosmonauts Oleg Nowizki and Pyotr Dubrov went on a space walk, as the space company announced in the short message service Twitter. It was about work on the new Russian research module “Nauka” (science).
“That a smoke alarm goes off on the Russian side is nothing new,” said German spaceman Matthias Maurer, who flies to the ISS at the end of October, at a press conference in Cologne on Thursday. In contrast to the American side of the ISS, the system works a little differently on the Russian side. “Dust often gets into the optics there, these are optical sensors, and they then first generate a smoke alarm. That is not yet a fire alarm. “
The ISS crew are naturally trained for extreme situations such as fire, pressure loss due to a leak or poison in the air, said Maurer. [dpa]
