Reported ammonia leak on the International Space Station proves to be false alarm

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The crew of the International Space Station evacuated its U.S. section on Wednesday morning after an alarm sounded, indicating a possible ammonia leak.. (Reuters)

Update:NASA has now confirmed that the leak was a false alarm, and U.S. astronauts will return to their segment of the space station. They'll wear oxygen masks while conducting tests for ammonia, and remove them once they confirm that the air is clear.

A portion of the International Space Station was evacuated followingcoolant loop pressure increases that possibly indicated a toxic leak of ammonia at 4 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday.All six members of the space station's crew are safe. An afternoon update from NASA confirmed that the problem was not an actual gas leak but a computer error that caused an alarm to sound unnecessarily.

The U.S. side of the space station was sealed off,the Russian Federal Space Agency said on itsWeb site. The statement characterized the situation as a leak of "harmful substances."

"The safety of the team was preserved thanks to swift actions of the cosmonauts and astronauts themselves and the team on the ground in Moscow and Houston," Maksim Matyushin, head of Russian Mission Control, said in the statement, as translatedby NBC News.

The currentExpedition 42 crew of the ISSincludes three Russians, an Italian and two Americans.

"The crew is safe, they're in the Russian segment, and we're working on understanding exactly what went on, NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told The Post on Wednesday morning. Humphries explained that we saw an increase in water loop pressure, on the crew cabin pressure, that could be indicative of an ammonia leak in a worst-case scenario.

Although some reports, citing NASA officials, characterized the issue as an ammonia leak, NASA tweeted Wednesday morning that there is "no ammonia leak confirmed."

This was repeatedduring an emergency newsconference at 7:55 a.m.,when NASA representatives said they wished to emphasize that there was "no hard evidence" of a real ammonia leak on the space station. The U.S. crew did indeed don oxygen masks and move into the Russian segment of ISS, shutting down non-essential equipment and shutting the hatch behind them.

But as of that newsconference, equipment in the U.S. segment was already being turned back on. Flight control teams on the ground will continue to monitor the data from ISS, which they believe is indicative of a perfect storm of sensor errors not an actual leak of toxic fluid.

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Reported ammonia leak on the International Space Station proves to be false alarm

Astronauts find no leak in US module of space station

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Crewmembers on the International Space Station have now been allowed into the U.S. segment of the orbiting outpost, after a false alarm caused astronauts to evacuate that part of the station early Wednesday (Jan. 14).

The alarm could have indicated a possibleleak of toxic ammoniainto the station's cabin; however, NASA has found no evidence of a leak. NASA astronauts Terry Virts, Barry "Butch" Wilmore and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti re-entered the U.S. side which include the European, Japanese and U.S. station modules wearing masks at about 3:05 p.m. EST (2005 GMT). Cristoforetti and Virts took samples of the station's air and found no ammonia, according to NASA.

"The crew is in good condition, was never in any danger and no ammonia leak has been detected on the orbital laboratory," NASA officialswrote in an update.

NASA officials were worried that thespace station's cooling system which uses ammonia to help regulate temperatures on the station could have been leaking the noxious gas into the station's atmosphere. [Inside the International Space Station (Infographic)]

Virts, Cristoforetti and Wilmore joined cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov in the Russian segment for much of the day after the alarm sounded at about 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT). Because there is no sign of ammonia in the cabin, the crewmembers should be allowed to take of their masks and roam freely through all parts of the station, according to NASA.

Officials now think that the false alarm may have been caused by an error in a computer used to beam information to and from the space station. The computer, called a multiplexer-demultiplexer, now seems to be in good shape after officials turned the device off and on again, NASA officials said.

Mission Controllers are still working to understand exactly what set off the alarm, but work for the astronauts should continue as normal on Thursday (Jan. 15). NASA officials will now take steps to re-activate a cooling loop powered down because of the alarm.

NASA officials do not think that the research on the station was negatively impacted because of the evacuation.

The false alarm Wednesday was the third of its kind to occur in the more than 15 years crews have lived on the space station. Crewmembers have been forced to evacuate the U.S. side of the outpost, taking refuge in the Russian side, two other times due to a false ammonia alarm, NASA spokesman Rob Navias told Space.com via email.

Rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts have continuously manned the International Space Station since 2000. The station has the approximate living space of a five-bedroom house.

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Astronauts find no leak in US module of space station

A false alarm for crew on the International Space Station

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The crew of the International Space Station evacuated its U.S. section on Wednesday morning after an alarm sounded, indicating a possible ammonia leak.. (Reuters)

Update:NASA has now confirmed that the leak was a false alarm, and U.S. astronauts will return to their segment of the space station. They'll wear oxygen masks while conducting tests for ammonia, and remove them once they confirm that the air is clear.

A portion of the International Space Station was evacuated followingcoolant loop pressure increases that possibly indicated a toxic leak of ammonia at 4 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday.All six members of the space station's crew are safe. An afternoon update from NASA confirmed that the problem was not an actual gas leak but a computer error that caused an alarm to sound unnecessarily.

The U.S. side of the space station was sealed off,the Russian Federal Space Agency said on itsWeb site. The statement characterized the situation as a leak of "harmful substances."

"The safety of the team was preserved thanks to swift actions of the cosmonauts and astronauts themselves and the team on the ground in Moscow and Houston," Maksim Matyushin, head of Russian Mission Control, said in the statement, as translatedby NBC News.

The currentExpedition 42 crew of the ISSincludes three Russians, an Italian and two Americans.

"The crew is safe, they're in the Russian segment, and we're working on understanding exactly what went on, NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told The Post on Wednesday morning. Humphries explained that we saw an increase in water loop pressure, on the crew cabin pressure, that could be indicative of an ammonia leak in a worst-case scenario.

Although some reports, citing NASA officials, characterized the issue as an ammonia leak, NASA tweeted Wednesday morning that there is "no ammonia leak confirmed."

This was repeatedduring an emergency newsconference at 7:55 a.m.,when NASA representatives said they wished to emphasize that there was "no hard evidence" of a real ammonia leak on the space station. The U.S. crew did indeed don oxygen masks and move into the Russian segment of ISS, shutting down non-essential equipment and shutting the hatch behind them.

But as of that newsconference, equipment in the U.S. segment was already being turned back on. Flight control teams on the ground will continue to monitor the data from ISS, which they believe is indicative of a perfect storm of sensor errors not an actual leak of toxic fluid.

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A false alarm for crew on the International Space Station

Politics delayed Al Gores favorite satellite for 10 years, but in two weeks, itll fly

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The Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite is scheduled to launch on January 29, 2015. It will orbit between the Earth and the Sun a million miles away, monitoring space weather and taking images of the Earth. Image courtesy NASA.

On January 29, NOAA, the U.S. Air Force and NASA plan to launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, which will orbit the Earth from a distance of one million miles, measuring increased magnetic fields and particle fluxes from solar storms. Positioned between the Earth and the Sun, the satellite will act like an ocean buoy in space, warning scientists about incoming solar storms, said Doug Biesecker at the National Weather Services Space Weather Prediction Center.

For scientists watching, the launch will represent the end of a long wait. Known by its acronym, DSCOVR, the satellite has been in storage at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 2001. DSCOVRs journey to space has taken more than a decade, mired in political controversy and tragic timing, said Ghassem R. Asrar, formerly NASAs chief earth scientist and currently director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, which studies solutions to global climate change.

In 1998, then-Vice President Al Gore approached NASA with an idea: a satellite that would take continuous photos of the Earth from the first LaGrange Point, or L1, one million miles from Earth. He hoped that the continuous stream of photos would encourage the public to care about Earths fragile environment. He cited Apollo 17s famous Blue Marble image as inspiration.

At the time, Asrar saw the potential for much more. NASAs space weather satellite, ACE, which was already located at L1, needed to be replaced. A new satellite at that orbit could provide better forecasting for solar storms that knock out electricity grids and communication systems on Earth.

After further discussions with Gore, NASA scientists dreamt up a satellite that would revolutionize climate science, said Adam Szabo, NASAs project scientist for the mission. From that vantage point, scientists could image an entire sunlit side of the Earth in a 2048 by 2048 pixel image every two hours in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. A three-color camera would capture the Earths ozone, cloud patterns, dust from the Sahara desert or vegetation growing around the world, Szabo said. At a million miles away, scientists could compare how the seasons change from year to year.

Low Earth orbiting satellites have to stitch together images, he said. It can take a full day to piece together a full image of the Earth. From L1you can start to study things like global cloud pattern changes. You can see large-scale weather systems as they change in a day.

We could predict where the next famine around the world would be before the next harvest begins, he added.

The satellite would also measure how much solar radiation was being absorbed and reflected by the Earth, a key to understanding global warming, Szabo said. It would be like a thermometer for the entire planet, he said.

The scientific possibilities were exciting, and the mission would open up opportunities for education and communication about earth science, Asrar said.

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Politics delayed Al Gores favorite satellite for 10 years, but in two weeks, itll fly

Space station evacuation ends; crew returns to work after ammonia scare

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Crew members aboard the International Space Station have returned to the American segment they were forced evacuate early Wednesday due to fear of a possible ammonia leak.

NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, commander of the current mission, and Terry Virts, a flight engineer, wore black and pink protective masks as they opened the hatch and tested the air inside the cabin.

The tests turned up no indications of any ammonia, according to NASA.

Ground crews became concerned that the deadly gas may have escaped from the heat exchange system that helps cool the space station about 1 a.m. PST. Mike Suffredini, NASAs program manager for the ISS, said the water level in one of the coolant loops was off scale which could have been a sign of an ammonia leak.

That prompted the first of two evacuations from the U.S. segment of the space station, which has the ammonia system mounted on its exterior , to the Russian segment, which includes the service module.

The astronauts returned after getting an all-clear, but then the ground crew detected a change in cabin pressure.

If youre leaking ammonia into the water loop and it eventually finds its way into the cabin, then you would expect the cabin pressure to go up, Suffredini said. The evacuation procedure was then repeated.

It now appears that the pressure rose as a result of various actions taken during the first evacuation, not because of any leak, Suffredini said.

The initial problem was traced to a faulty card inside one of the space stations computer relay systems. After rebooting the computer equipment in question, the error message cleared and the relay box returned to good operating condition, NASA said.

Mission managers at Johnson Space Center in Houston had informed the crew several hours earlier that the ammonia system was probably fine.

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Space station evacuation ends; crew returns to work after ammonia scare

U.S. part of space station evacuated

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Last Updated Jan 14, 2015 4:58 PM EST

Crew members returned safely to the U.S. segment of the International Space Station Wednesday afternoon after evacuating earlier in the day.

Concern about a possible ammonia coolant leak early Wednesday prompted the three astronauts to evacuate their portion of the complex, joining three cosmonauts in Russian modules while flight controllers studied telemetry to figure out if alarms were triggered by an actual leak, a sensor problem or some other issue, officials said Wednesday.

A few hours later, engineers studying telemetry found no evidence of any leaking ammonia, raising suspicion that a circuit board, or card, in a specific computer known as a multiplexer-demultiplexer, or MDM, might have suffered a failure that took four critical sensors off line. That, in turn, triggered a sequence of events that may have combined to indicate a leak in the station's ammonia coolant system.

"At this point, the team does not believe we leaked ammonia," Mike Suffredini, the space station program manager, said at 11 a.m. EST (GMT-5). "What we are dealing with is this failure of probably a card inside one of our multiplexer-demultiplexers, it's just a computer that sends telemetry down and brings commands back up. This card has a number of measurements on it and those were the measurements we lost."

The alarms were triggered just after 4 a.m. EST (GMT-5) when an apparent pressure increase was detected in a water coolant loop in the forward Harmony module. Water is circulated inside the station to carry away the heat generated by the lab's electronics. The water then flows through components called heat exchangers, transferring the heat to ammonia coolant that flows through huge external radiators to keep the station within temperature limits.

The apparent pressure spike in coolant loop B was a possible indicator of an ammonia leak, and playing it safe, flight controllers told Expedition 42 commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore, Terry Virts and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti to don masks and move into the Russian segment of the space station.

The telemetry was confusing at first and the initial evacuation was briefly called off. But when flight controllers saw indications of a slight pressure increase in the crew's air supply -- a more convincing sign of an actual leak into the station -- they told the crew to head back to the Russian segment.

Joining cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev, Elena Serova and Anton Shkaplerov, Wilmore, Cristoforetti and Virts closed a hatch between NASA's Unity module and the Russian Zarya module, isolating all six crew members in the Russian segment of the lab complex, which uses a different cooling system.

Flight controllers then powered down critical systems tied into coolant loop B and shut down an external pump to reduce the pressure in the system. After studying the telemetry, however, engineers saw signs that something in that powerdown process might have triggered the slight change in air pressure that was detected.

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U.S. part of space station evacuated

Astronauts flee US side of space station but no sign of leak

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) In a rare scare, astronauts fled the American side of the International Space Station on Wednesday after an alarm indicated a possible toxic leak. NASA later said there was no leak of ammonia coolant and a computer problem likely set off the false alarm.

By Wednesday afternoon, the astronauts were back in the U.S. part of the orbiting outpost. Earlier, the six crew members had huddled safely on the Russian side once when the alarm sounded and again following an initial all-clear.

"Hey everybody, thanks for your concern," Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti said via Twitter. "We're all safe & doing well in the Russian segment."

The "unscheduled excitement," as NASA called it, occurred around 4 a.m. EST, well into the station crew's workday.

As alarms blared, the astronauts followed emergency procedures in slapping on oxygen masks, taking cover in the Russian quarters, then sealing the hatches between the U.S. and Russian sides. At the same time, flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston turned off non-essential equipment.

Within minutes, Mission Control gave an all-clear, but sent the astronauts scurrying back over to the Russian side again when there was more evidence of a possible leak of the coolant.

The highly toxic liquid ammonia, flowing outside the space station, is used to cool electronics. Flight controllers originally feared it had gotten into the water system running inside. Now, it's believed that a failed card in a computer-relay box was the culprit.

The crew three Russians, two Americans and the Italian Cristoforetti stayed in the three, relatively small Russian compartments while Mission Control analyzed data. Engineers wanted to understand the computer failure and confirm "that the system is tight like we believe it to be," space station program manager Mike Suffredini said on NASA TV.

About 11 hours after the ammonia system-alarm sounded, the hatch to the U.S. segment was reopened. Cristoforetti and U.S. astronaut Terry Virts ran tests and no ammonia was detected.

When the alarm went off, the crew had been dealing with supplies and experiments from the newly arrived SpaceX capsule including fruit flies. None of the research appears to be jeopardized, Suffredini said.

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Astronauts flee US side of space station but no sign of leak

NASA's Venus cloud city?

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Handout image courtesy of NASA shows the planet Venus shortly before its transit of the Sun, June 5, 2012.(REUTERS/NASA/AIA/Solar Dynamics Observatory/Handout)

Just like out of a Star Wars movie, NASA is investigating the possibility of building a blimp-suspended city in the clouds high above Venus' searing-hot surface. The project, known as the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), is a spacecraft designed by the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center for the purpose of exploring Earths closest neighbor. Thereve been plenty of robotic missions along the way that have been proposed to explore Venus, Project Head Dale Arney told FoxNews.com. This one [is] looking at what it would take to explore it with humans and what the feasibility looks like in that realm.

Despite Venus being closer to Earth than Mars by a few hundred million miles (depending on orbit), space agencies have been focusing their exploration efforts primarily on the red planet, and for good reason. While Venus has a similar density and chemical composition to Earth, the surface conditions have led researchers to refer to the planet as the solar systems version of Hell. The mean temperature is a balmy 863 degrees Fahrenheit, the clouds are made of sulfuric acid, and there are more volcanoes (totaling, in some estimates, over 1,000,000) than on any other planet in the Milky Way. The air pressure is also 92% percent higher than Earths at sea level. Probes landing on the planets surface have only lasted, at most, two hours.

The HAVOC project, created by Arney and Chris Jones, would get around this problem by staying high above these hellish conditions -- 30 miles above the surface, to be exact. First, a robotic probe would be sent to Venus to inspect the atmospheric conditions. Next, a crew would visit the planets orbit for a stay of 30 days, followed by a 30-day stay floating in the atmosphere. The primary feature of the concept is a 130 meter-long mobile blimp, its top covered with solar panels to utilize Venus close proximity to the sun. The helium-filled, solar-powered craft would hover above the highly acidic cloud-line for 30 days as a crew gathers information about the planets atmosphere.

While a permanent human presence in a blimp-suspended cloud city is the ultimate goal, Jones is quick to point out that theyre taking things one step at a time. What we focused on in this study was understanding what an initial robotic and an initial, very short-term human mission would look like, and then just very notionally thought about what you could then build to beyond that -- something like a more permanent presence. But our primary focus was on understanding what kind of technology system it would take to do any kind of mission at all, mainly to do the science and test out the technology it would need in order to enable those kinds of missions.

A mission to Venus could be used as a test-run for crewed missions to Mars, the former taking 440 days using existing or near-term propulsion technology while a trip to the red planet would take 500 days at a minimum. Astronaut teams would also have the choice to abort a Venus mission and return to Earth immediately after arrival, whereas missions to Mars would have no such option: the crew would have to wait on the planet until just the right orbital alignment occurred for a safe return home.

So when can we expect to see an actual mission? NASA currently has no plans to send humans to Venus and according to the Langley branchs head of public affairs Michael Finneran it may be a while before they do. This is a visionary concept that is not being proposed for funding as a mission, Finneran says. If at some point NASA decided to fund a human mission to Venus, many concepts would be examined over a period of time before one was selected.

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NASA's Venus cloud city?

Space Station Ammonia Leak Scare Likely a False Alarm, NASA Says

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NASA (via Flickr) European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA's Terry Virts participate in an emergency exercise training drill on Dec. 1, 2014.

Crewmembers on the International Space Station have now been allowed into the U.S. segment of the orbiting outpost, after a false alarm caused astronauts to evacuate that part of the station early Wednesday (Jan. 14).

The alarm could have indicated a possible leak of toxic ammonia into the station's cabin; however, NASA has found no evidence of a leak. NASA astronauts Terry Virts, Barry "Butch" Wilmore and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti re-entered the U.S. side which include the European, Japanese and U.S. station modules wearing masks at about 3:05 p.m. EST (2005 GMT). Cristoforetti and Virts took samples of the station's air and found no ammonia, according to NASA.

"The crew is in good condition, was never in any danger and no ammonia leak has been detected on the orbital laboratory," NASA officials wrote in an update.

NASA Crewmembers were forced to evacuate the U.S. segment of the International Space Station on Jan. 14, 2015 due to a possible ammonia leak.

NASA officials were worried that the space station's cooling system which uses ammonia to help regulate temperatures on the station could have been leaking the noxious gas into the station's atmosphere. [Inside the International Space Station (Infographic)]

Virts, Cristoforetti and Wilmore joined cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov in the Russian segment for much of the day after the alarm sounded at about 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT). Because there is no sign of ammonia in the cabin, the crewmembers should be allowed to take of their masks and roam freely through all parts of the station, according to NASA.

Officials now think that the false alarm may have been caused by an error in a computer used to beam information to and from the space station. The computer, called a multiplexer-demultiplexer, now seems to be in good shape after officials turned the device off and on again, NASA officials said.

Mission Controllers are still working to understand exactly what set off the alarm, but work for the astronauts should continue as normal on Thursday (Jan. 15). NASA officials will now take steps to re-activate a cooling loop powered down because of the alarm.

NASA officials do not think that the research on the station was negatively impacted because of the evacuation.

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Space Station Ammonia Leak Scare Likely a False Alarm, NASA Says