Internation Space Station - ?On fire?
In the early morning of September 19th, NASA officials declared an emergency onboard the International Space Station after the 3 person crew reported smoke onboard. The International Space Station (ISS), orbiting nearly 353 km above the surface of the earth circles once every 90 minutes. ISS FACT SHEETWhen the astronauts detected the strong odor onboard the head of the ISS program, Michael Suffredini, ordered the astronauts to prepare for an emergency. Astronauts put on gloves and surgical masks and were ordered to place charcoal filters in the ventilation ducts to extract the smoke. Soon after it was determined that there was no fire onboard but the odor was actually a chemical leak of potassium hydroxide in a vapor form caused by a leak in the oxygen producing canisters called Elektrons.
While these canisters, installed by the Russian’s as their part of the ISS, are important to survival onboard other methods of getting oxygen are available. Onboard they have oxygen producing candles and can tap into storage containers of oxygen onboard.
Astronauts described the odor as burning rubber coming from the Elektron canister about the size of a small water heater. The malfunction occurred in what is called a “unique time in space history”. The malfunction happened with three man space craft in the air, the six-max Atlantis crew, the Soyuz spacecraft that took-off from Kazakhstan this morning and the ISS.
The ISS is a huge Globalization product bringing many countries from around the world into space including USA, Russia, and China to name a few.
For more of this story on the International Space Station….
Chemical Leak On Space Station Prompts Emergency
First-ever emergency declared aboard International Space Station
posted by Anonymous @ 9/18/2006 08:00:00 PM
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