Russian Astronauts Smell Smoke on International Space Station’s Zvezda Module, Spacewalk On Course

Russian Space Agency Roscosmos said smoke alarm sounded at 01:55 GMT. A spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts has begun on Thursday

A July 2021 photo of Russia's "Nauka" Multipurpose Laboratory Module clicked shortly after docking to the Zvezda service module's Earth-facing port on the International Space Station | Photo: NASA

New Delhi: In the Russian module of the International Space Station, a smoke alarm went off, and a 'burning' smell was sensed by astronauts, media reports said, quoting Russia's Space Agency Roscosmos, and NASA. 

The Russian Space Agency said that the incident occurred at 21:55 EDT Wednesdy, before a scheduled spacewalk. Roscosmos also said this incident was the latest in the series of problems threatening the safety of the Russian module, AFP reported. 

Meanwhile, Expedition 65 Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos began the spacewalk on time, NASA said. The spacewalk is being undertaken to prepare the new Nauka multipurpose laboratory module for operations in space. They opened the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock of the ISS at 10:51 am EDT Thursday.

What went wrong in the Russian segment of ISS?

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that Thomas Pesquet said "the smell of burning plastic or electronic equipment" drifted to the US segment of the IS.

"A smoke detector was triggered in the Zvezda service module of the Russian segment of the International Space Station during automatic battery charging, and an alarm went off," Roscosmos was quoted as saying.

Roscosmos also said that a filter was turned on by the Russian crew, who went back to sleep after the air was cleaned. It said the spacewalk would go ahead as scheduled, and that all systems were operating normally. 

RIA, citing audio communications broadcast by the U.S. space agency NASA, reported that Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky had seen and smelled smoke and that French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said the smell of burnt plastic or electronics had spread from the Russian segment to the U.S. section.

Past issues at the ISS modules

Last month, Vladimir Soloyov, the chief engineer of rocket and space corporation Energia, said superficial fissures were found in the Zarya module of the ISS. This module was built by a Russian company. 

A space official had given a warning last month that "irreparable failures" could occur due to out of date software, the AFP report said. 

Also, this isn't the first time the Zvezda service module faced problems. It has experienced several air leaks, including this year and in 2019, states the report.

In July, the re-ignition of the thrusters of the Nauka module several hours after docking caused the entire ISS to be tilted out of orbit.

It has been reported earlier that Russia plans to leave the ISS after 2025, and launch its own orbital station as the hardware on the ISS is ageing.