NASA has been forced to reassure the public that there is no emergency aboard the International Space Station after audio from a medical exercise was accidentally played during a livestream on Wednesday evening.
The regular livestream was interrupted at 6:28 PM ET by an unknown speaker – apparently a flight surgeon – who was in contact with the ISS crew about how to deal with a commander suffering from severe compression sickness.
The speaker advises the crew to “check his pulse one more time” before placing the stricken astronaut in a suit filled with pure oxygen. She says any action would be a “best effort treatment” and better than doing nothing.
“Unfortunately, the prognosis for Commander is relatively bleak,” she says.
She says she is “concerned that there is serious DCS [decompression sickness] hits” and tells the crew to put a suit on him as soon as possible.
She mentions that there is a hospital in San Fernando, Spain, with hyperbaric treatment facilities, in an apparent suggestion to order an emergency evacuation from the space station.
But after stoking alarm among the space enthusiasts listening, NASA revealed the scenario wasn’t real: The ISS crew were all safely asleep at the time.
“There is no emergency situation aboard the International Space Station,” NASA said.
“At approximately 5:28 PM CDT, audio was broadcast on the NASA livestream from a ground-based simulation audio channel indicating that a crew member was experiencing effects associated with decompression sickness,” the agency said. in a message on X.
“This audio was accidentally misrouted from an ongoing simulation in which crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space and is not related to a real emergency,” NASA said.
“The crew members of the International Space Station were in their sleep period at the time. “They all remain healthy and safe, and tomorrow’s spacewalk will begin as scheduled at 8 a.m. EDT,” it added.
The emergency exercise comes after two astronauts from Boeing’s Starliner capsule successfully docked with the ISS last week.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
