People like to say that they would want to get away from the Earth or leave the planet when something inconvenient happens. In their minds, they believe that space is a place where mishaps and bad things do not happen much. Well, too much of their surprise or dismay, unfortunate accidents and incidents do happen in space as well.
Recently, the International Space Station was reported to be on fire. The fire caught on when the astronauts were sleeping, and it started from the Russian end of the station. On Thursday morning, the astronauts woke up to the sound of the fire alarm in their space station.
According to TASS, a Russian state news agency, that the astronauts are thankfully all safe and well and there is a spacewalk scheduled for today that is still happening. This means that there were no major accidents.
The alarm went off in the Zvezda module, which became a part of the ISS in 2000. It started at 4:55 am Moscow Time (9:55 pm EST on Wednesday), per TASS. The trigger for the alarm is still unknown. According to Russia-owned news agency RIA Novosti, astronaut Oleg Novitsky smelled smoke, and Thomas Pesquet, the French astronaut, smelled burnt plastic.
Later, Roscosmos tweeted that all the operations were doing just fine and nothing was damaged. An air-purifying system was turned on in response to the incident. It was confirmed that the air was safe to the crew but didn’t make clear whether there would have been a risk had the air not been cleansed.
ISS crew also reported smoke from the module in 2014; and in 2020, astronauts tracked an air leak back to the module by the station. People have started saying that ISS is getting old and needs upgrades or replacement. This article was originally published by Business Insider.