A small accident occurred in recent days on the International Space Station. It was November 23, 3.31 pm. The Russian Progress MS-29 robotic probe had just reached the ISS with a load of supplies, after two days of travel in space, when, when it was time to open the door and enter the spaceship, the ISS crew noticed that something was wrong: a strange smell came from the spacecraft, and strange droplets could be noticed suspended in the air. Bad smells on the space station are nothing new, but a toxic note in what lingered in the probe alerted the astronauts, prompting mission control to quarantine the entire Russian Poisk module to which it was docked, while they were activated air purification protocols, and monitoring began to verify that there were no dangers to the crew and the station.
NASA’s X account recounted the bizarre story, specifying that the analyzes did not identify the presence of contaminants in the atmosphere of the station and the Russian module. And that already on the afternoon of Sunday 24th the crew received the green light to open the spacecraft again and begin the procedures to unload the two and a half tons of food, clothes, scientific experiments, water and fuel crammed inside.
In a NASA blog post, the agency reports that the smell was likely caused by an “outgassing” of the probe’s payload. A vague definition, which for now does not clarify the source of the stench and what dangers (the American agency denies there were any) it could have posed for the astronauts’ health.
For now the accident has ended without consequences, except for the Russian crew, who in their portion of the space station were forced to wear extra protection for a few hours, waiting for mission control to complete the analysis of the atmosphere of the probe. However, there was no hassle in the NASA section, which is separated from the one managed by the Russian agency Roscosmos by a watertight door, which nowadays is almost always kept closed, due to an air leak in the Russian module which has been operated by the two agencies for five years. they cannot pinpoint the cause, nor predict with certainty the potential long-term effect on the station’s operations.
The misadventure of recent days, however, is only the latest in a series of problems involving Russian spacecraft on the ISS. Such as the Soyuz MS-22 coolant leak in December 2022, which forced Roscomsos to send an emergency shuttle to replace the damaged one, a similar accident that happened to the Progress MS-21 cargo ship in February 2023, or the loss of coolant tested by the external radiator of the Nauka module in October 2023.