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NASA Is Considering Evacuation from the ISS

Escape options analyzed

Jun 16, 2007 08:45 GMT  ·  By
Though officials say the prospect is unlikely, should an emergency evacuation be required, space station crew members could escape via a NASA space shuttle or a Russian craft kept docked at the station for just such a purpose.
   Though officials say the prospect is unlikely, should an emergency evacuation be required, space station crew members could escape via a NASA space shuttle or a Russian craft kept docked at the station for just such a purpose.

After all six main control computers on the Russian side of the ISS shut down at the same time, leaving the space station almost "dead in the water," NASA is considering the options of a general evacuation in case of emergency.

A malfunction caused the shutdown of two key computers that control navigation and oxygen production on the Russian side of the International Space Station. Later, all six main control computers reported a glitch that forced astronauts on Thursday to turn off equipment in the docked shuttle Atlantis to conserve energy.

Officials are optimistic, although this glitch has baffled space engineers in Houston and in Moscow. "We've got a plan to go work the problem," said NASA Associate Administrator William H. Gerstenmaier during a briefing Thursday at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "I don't consider this critical."

However, NASA is calculating all the options in case of a general evacuation, and said that the Atlantis space shuttle could be used by the ten people aboard, seven from Atlantis plus the station's three temporary residents, to get back to Earth. So "everyone on the station now could get on it and come down, if they needed to," said Roger Launius, chair of the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

In case of a future disaster, when the shuttle will no longer be attached to the ISS, an escape pod could be used. This is actually one of the three-person Russian Soyuz spacecrafts, which carries astronauts to and from the station. Since there are only three astronauts on the space station at any given time, all three could evacuate via a Soyuz craft, even without a visiting space shuttle.

These are all the chances the astronauts have to escape the ISS in case of emergency, but for now, the chances of abandoning the station are "extremely remote" according to officials.