Smoke alarm triggered at International Space Station; astronauts smell burnt plastic

The Russian module on the International Space Station saw smoke alarms go off as the crew reported smelling burnt plastic and noticing smoke.

The incident happened in the wee hours of Thursday morning, September 9, Russian space agency Roscosmos revealed. The incident occurred in the Zvezda module built by Russia. The space station’s batteries were being recharged at the time.

The Russian space agency elaborated that their ISS crew activated air filters after the smoke alarms went off. Once the air quality returned to normal, the crew went back to their “night rest.” The astronauts will be moving forward with a planned spacewalk today.

Currently, the International Space Station has 7 crew members. These include Roscosmos’ Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, NASA’s Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA’s Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA’s Thomas Pesquet.

The Russian crew will carry out a scheduled six-hour-long spacewalk. The spacewalk is part of a mission to integrate the Nauka science lab, built by Russia, with the ISS. The Nauka module docked with the ISS back in July.

The module had put the ISS off course shortly after docking due to the engines firing up by accident. Roscosmos had blamed the incident on a software problem.