Smoke alarms went off in the Russian segment of the ISS during recharging the station’s batteries, the Russian space agency said.
The crew of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has reported smoke and the smell of plastic burned as fire and smoke alarms were activated.
Russian space agency Roscosmos said the incident took place on Thursday at 1:55 GMT on the Russian-made Zvezda module while the station’s batteries were being recharged.
According to Roscosmos, the crew activated the air filters and returned to their “night rest” once air quality returned to normal. The crew will proceed with a spacewalk scheduled for Thursday as planned, the agency noted.
The incident is the latest in a series of problems that have raised security concerns about conditions in the Russian segment.
“A smoke detector was activated in the Zvezda service module of the Russian segment of the International Space Station during the automatic charging of the battery and an alarm went off,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said the “smell of burning plastic or electronic material” reached the US segment of the station, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing a NASA transmission.
The ISS is currently operated by NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur; Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, of Roscosmos of Russia; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Pesquet.
Novitsky and Dubrov are scheduled to take a six-hour spacewalk on Thursday to continue integrating the Russian-built Nauka science lab that docked with the space station in July.
“All systems work normally,” Roscosmos said.
The Russian segment of the ISS has experienced several problems recently and a space official warned last month that obsolete software could cause “irreparable failures.”
The Zvezda service module, which is part of the Russian segment, has experienced several air leaks, including earlier this year and 2019.
Citing concerns over hardware aging, Russia has previously indicated that it plans to abandon the ISS after 2025 and launch its own orbital station.
In July, the entire ISS tilted out of orbit after the propellers of the Nauka module restarted several hours after the docking, an incident that Russian space officials blamed for a software bug .