The crew onboard the International Space Station has re-entered the U.S. side of the orbiting laboratory, 11 hours after evacuating into the Russian segment due to a possible toxic ammonia leak.
Expedition 42 flight engineers Terry Virts and Samantha Cristoforetti, both wearing protective face masks, were the first to re-enter the U.S. segment at 2:05 p.m. CST (2005 GMT). The two astronauts sampled the atmosphere in the modules and reported finding no indications of ammonia.
Above: Astronauts Butch WiImore (front) and Terry Virts entered the U.S. segment wearing protective masks.
Shortly thereafter, the hatch separating the U.S. and Russian sides of the complex was opened and the rest of the crew, including NASA astronaut and Expedition 42 commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore," was allowed to doff their masks and enter the U.S. segment to resume normal operations.
Prior to Virts and Cristoforetti taking air samples, flight controllers in Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston studied data received from a variety of the space station's onboard systems, which also indicated no leakage of ammonia. The alarms that initiated the movement of the crew out of the U.S. segment early Wednesday morning (Jan. 14) are suspected to have been caused by a transient error message in one of the station's computer relay systems, called a multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM).
Commands were sent from the ground to turn that relay box off and then back on again, which cleared the error message. The relay box is now reported to be in good operating condition.
Flight controllers are continuing to analyze data in an effort to learn what set today's actions in motion. Work to reactivate the station's cooling loop B will continue throughout the night and into the day on Thursday. The crew is expected to resume their normal schedule of research activities on Thursday as well.
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