NASA accidently airs simulated medical emergency on ISS, panicking the public
NASA yesterday accidently aired an on-going drill where ground astronauts were simulating a serious medical emergency, causing public alarm because it appeared the emergency was on ISS itself.
The regular scheduled livestream was interrupted at 6:28 p.m. ET by an unidentified speaker — apparently a flight surgeon — liaising with the crew on the ISS on how to deal with a commander suffering from serious compression sickness.
The speaker advises the crew to “check his pulse one more time,” before placing the stricken astronaut inside a suit pumped full of pure oxygen. She says any action would be “best effort treatment” and better than doing nothing. “Unfortunately, the prognosis for Commander is relatively tenuous,” she says.
She says she is “concerned that there are some severe DCS [decompression sickness] hits” and tells the crew to get him in a suit as soon as possible. She mentions that there is a hospital in San Fernando, Spain, with hyperbaric treatment facilities, in an apparent suggestion of ordering an emergency evacuation from the space station.
But after fueling alarm among the space enthusiasts listening, NASA revealed that the scenario wasn’t real — the ISS crew were all safely asleep at the time.
It appears this was a training exercise on the ground. For reasons that have not been explained, the audio somehow got rerouted onto NASA’s public live stream channel, forcing the agency to quickly issue an explanation.
NASA yesterday accidently aired an on-going drill where ground astronauts were simulating a serious medical emergency, causing public alarm because it appeared the emergency was on ISS itself.
The regular scheduled livestream was interrupted at 6:28 p.m. ET by an unidentified speaker — apparently a flight surgeon — liaising with the crew on the ISS on how to deal with a commander suffering from serious compression sickness.
The speaker advises the crew to “check his pulse one more time,” before placing the stricken astronaut inside a suit pumped full of pure oxygen. She says any action would be “best effort treatment” and better than doing nothing. “Unfortunately, the prognosis for Commander is relatively tenuous,” she says.
She says she is “concerned that there are some severe DCS [decompression sickness] hits” and tells the crew to get him in a suit as soon as possible. She mentions that there is a hospital in San Fernando, Spain, with hyperbaric treatment facilities, in an apparent suggestion of ordering an emergency evacuation from the space station.
But after fueling alarm among the space enthusiasts listening, NASA revealed that the scenario wasn’t real — the ISS crew were all safely asleep at the time.
It appears this was a training exercise on the ground. For reasons that have not been explained, the audio somehow got rerouted onto NASA’s public live stream channel, forcing the agency to quickly issue an explanation.
