Fumes cause big scare for space station's crew

HOUSTON — An oxygen generator on the international space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant Monday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old station.

NASA said the crew members' lives were never in danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels, and a charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. Within a couple of hours, life aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.

But it was the biggest scare this smooth-running space station has had.

Although it paled in comparison to two fires and a collision on two previous Russian space stations and the nearly fatal explosion on Apollo 13, the incident served as a reminder of how life-and-death emergencies can come out of nowhere. It is why an emergency space capsule is always parked at the station in case of a sudden order to abandon ship.

NASA never came close to ordering the crew to leave, space station program manager Mike Suffredini said.

The astronauts sounded an alarm after the equipment began smoking and turned off the ventilation system to avoid spreading any fumes from leaking drops of potassium hydroxide, which is used to power batteries.

Monitors showed that the cabin air was safe. "It was just an irritant issue," NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said. "The crew did exactly the right things they were trained to do."

It was the type of problem that is always in the back of crew members' minds, said former astronaut Jerry Linenger, who was aboard the Russian space station Mir during a 1997 fire and frequent antifreeze leaks that gave that old station a gas-station-like smell.

Fumes are one of the low-level risks that wear on astronauts, Linenger said. "You realize you are in a closed ecosystem and you're breathing it. It's kind of in the back of your mind and it's hard to get out of the back of your mind. ... You're thinking this is not good."

The problem originated in a Russian oxygen generating machine, called an Elektron, that had been shut off for nine days while the space shuttle Atlantis was docked to the station. At about 1 a.m. PDT Monday, Russian flight controllers asked that the device be turned back on. It shut itself down and would not restart.

Three hours later, Moscow ordered station commander Pavel Vinogradov to try again. A part of the machine that holds liquids overheated. It melted through a rubber seal, produced puffs of smoke, a bad smell and the release of the irritating chemical, according to NASA.

"The Elektron is a very fragile thing," Vinogradov later told Moscow. "It was extremely hot. ... I decided to turn it off."

The space station has plenty of oxygen, another Elektron and other means of getting oxygen, so air will not be a problem, Suffredini said.