Odd smell coming from Russian spacecraft docked at space station
A Russian Progress spacecraft delivering nearly three tons of supplies to the International Space Station also brought an unwanted smell when cosmonauts opened the hatch.
[....] "After opening the Progress spacecraft's hatch, the Roscosmos cosmonauts noticed an unexpected odor and observed small droplets, prompting the crew to close the Poisk hatch to the rest of the Russian segment," NASA said Sunday.
NASA did not describe the odor. Russian space news outlet Russianspaceweb.com reports that the cosmonaut crew described it as "toxic" and closed the hatch immediately.
The space agency said the space station's air scrubbers and contaminant sensors monitored the ISS atmosphere for about 24 hours before flight controllers reported normal air quality on Sunday.
Hopefully an air freshener was included for hanging in zero gee.
(Score: 4, Funny) by AnonTechie on Wednesday November 27, @10:49AM (1 child)
I believe the issue has been resolved:
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/cosmonauts-russian-progess-cargo-delivery-iss-unwelcome-smell [foxweather.com]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Friday November 29, @10:18AM
Dammit Boris, I told you to leave babushka's special kvashenaya kapusta at home!
(Score: 5, Funny) by looorg on Wednesday November 27, @01:30PM (8 children)
Damn. I was holding out hope for that they had an illegal still or something where they distilled space vodka. Or at least made some space Borscht.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday November 27, @02:45PM
The future outer colonies will run on spacemeth. They are just the first to break bad.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Wednesday November 27, @05:44PM (5 children)
Or the body of a Russian military blogger.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Touché) by Username on Wednesday November 27, @06:14PM (1 child)
That would make terrible vodka.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27, @09:06PM
Not every yellow fluid one discovers in a beverage bottle is gonna be fit to drink.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday November 27, @09:02PM (2 children)
My first thought was farts, bad breath, soiled underwear, and toilet water. A big orbiting high-school gym locker room. It's not like they can open up a window and air the place out...and Febreeze can only mask so much before the whole place reeks of scented stench.
Thank goodness for becoming "nose-blind".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Friday November 29, @10:21AM (1 child)
A former boss of mine used to serve on nuclear submarines, he said that over time the you-think-that's-air-your-breathing on board got more and more rank but no-one noticed it because the change was so gradual. Then when they came into port and got to go outside the fresh air almost burned your lungs.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday November 29, @11:28PM
I wonder just how effective ionic air purification ( i.e. "Ionic Breeze" by Sharper Image ) would be? Or would the ozone it produces overwhelm with negative benefit?
I have one of those and used it a lot during the COVID scare, hoping the ozone and electrical charges it put in the air would hinder airborne pathogens.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27, @06:51PM
Other smells - from the movies:
Mr. President, I'm beginning to smell a big fat commie rat.
George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove
But the smell, you know, that gasoline smell... The whole hill, it smelled like... victory.
Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. William Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now
Have fun digging for more -- https://movie-sounds.org/smells/page-4#navtop [movie-sounds.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 27, @04:59PM (6 children)
I knew it was not propellant, the Progress craft has a feature where the propellant is routed outside, propellant "stuff" like pipes and valves never comes inside. I don't know if that is typical of human-rated spacecraft or not.
Its been a stereotype of sci fi TV/movies for decades that they "fix the ship from the inside" but at least on a Progress if you want to unclog the pipes or replace a filter or valve, you would have to do a probably impossible spacewalk.
Also if it was a propellant leak they'd probably just be dead, that stuff's pretty nasty.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Tork on Wednesday November 27, @05:54PM (4 children)
Star Trek's simplistic design of the Enterprise was publicly lauded by NASA for that. Their reasoning was that it wasn't a good idea for repairs to require a space suit. (I couldn't find a source, if I do I'll circle back.) As someone who dabbles in creative writing I do appreciate you pointing out a good reason why that shouldn't always be the case.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gnuman on Wednesday November 27, @06:21PM (3 children)
It's not a simplistic design. Star Trek has far more advanced design than our spacecraft. First thing you should remember are force fields. With force fields, a section that has some leak can be walled off and is not a problem anymore. We can't do that. We also have very limited pressurized indoor space. Star Trek doesn't have that limitation either.
Secondly, Star Trek had "Dry Dock" facilities for major repairs. The internal repairs were just "patches" and other temporary fixes. For example, plasma flows could be redirected through redundant junctions allowing temporary workarounds. Anyway .... comparing Soyuz or even Starship to Star Trek fantasies is like comparing abacus with a modern micro-controller or even FPGA (in case of Borg)...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Wednesday November 27, @11:23PM (2 children)
Oh man I chose my words very poorly. I'm sorry! I meant from a visual point of view, the conventional wisdom was space ships looked cooler when there were pipes and AC units on the outside of them. When ST came along the hull was designed to be smooth, meaning far fewer trips to the airlock to fix shit.
You're making really good points btw, I was just pointing out that one of the reasons hollywood gets things 'wrong' isn't necessarily stupidity. For example- The reason the Millennium Falcon (.. every year I get older that name gets sillier) has all the piping etc outside of it is so the audience believes the scale of it when they see the miniature. While easy to dismiss as cosmetic, it's an overriding priority that the audience watching screen while drinking their soda understands what they're seeing at a quick glance. Star Trek chose to remove that crutch for the Enterprise, NASA said it was cool, and then it became a trope.
The movie-era Enterprise model is pretty neat to look at from a design point of view. Right down to the signage-in-interesting-places. Sure seems like it'd be hard to sabotage in a space suit. Whereas the Falcon seems like a minor meteor strike might take out their showers.
I do apologize for being too much of a rush in my original post.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 28, @02:17AM
Interesting point, and yeah, it bothers me when there's all that breakable stuff on the outside, just waiting to get smacked by a rock. My starships present a fairly slick surface, so they don't bring home too much lint.
But I look at the Enterprise and I see angular momentum just waiting to twist all those pylons into pretzels, if they don't just break off entirely.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Thursday November 28, @05:16AM
I recall repair work being done both inside and outside of the Millennium Falcon, with the stuff inside appearing fairly small and quite detailed. Doing an image search for "inside Millennium Falcon" comes up with a fair amount of exposed pipes and displays. The asymmetry and exposed workings of the Millennium Falcon advance the impression of a vehicle added to in a slapdash fashion as needs arose. Star Trek vehicles look purpose-built to please passengers instead of the military vehicles they are supposed to be.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday November 27, @06:14PM
I would guess that would be a feature of ALL pressurized spacecraft. Anytime you route stuff inside, there is a possibility of a leak in multiple places. Air can leak out. Fuel can leak into the air. Fire hazard. etc. etc.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 27, @05:06PM
https://russianspaceweb.com/progress-ms-29.html [russianspaceweb.com]
"A US astronaut Don Pettit also reported some "spray paint-like" smell in the Node 3 module of the US Segment, but it was not immediately clear if it had originated from Progress MS-29."
"At the same time, sources within the Russian space industry indicated that the smell (and possibly droplets) could have originated not from the cargo compartment of the newly arrived Progress MS-29, but from the docking mechanism after the departure of the previous Progress MS-27 cargo ship on Nov. 19, 2024."
So who knows.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Frosty Piss on Wednesday November 27, @07:26PM (3 children)
Borscht farts.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27, @09:13PM
Geez. I get the image of "Braaaaap!" followed by an astronaut spinning heels-over-head in the zero-G environment.
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday November 27, @09:28PM (1 child)
Does make me wonder, what if you have an astronaut come onboard who has a, let’s say, ravenous gut bacteria flora and needs to fart a lot? It’s not like they can keep it in and you’re talking about a closed tube in the vacuum of space. Maybe they feed the astronauts a specific low gas diet for a while before flight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, @11:35PM
"Beano"!
( Now where is that Beano ad that featured a female bodybuilder experiencing a noisy gas pressure relief during a bench press competition? )
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Thursday November 28, @12:17AM
Perhaps the cargo craft was equipped with the Wolowitz Zero-Gravity Waste Disposal system.