An official NASA livestream that appeared to indicate that a dire medical emergency was unfolding on board the International Space Station Wednesday was “only a test,” Elon Musk’s SpaceX said.
The audio that aired at about 5:28 p.m. CDT on a YouTube livestream suggested that an ISS crew member “was experiencing effects related to decompression sickness (DCS),” NASA said on its ISS X account. The condition—colloquially known as “the bends”—involves gas bubbles forming in the bloodstream due to changes in atmospheric pressure, which can be fatal.
Purported copies of the audio shared online, which have not been verified by NASA, captured a female voice instructing members of the crew to get the commander “back in his suit.” The voice can also be heard telling the astronauts to check his pulse and give him oxygen, adding at one point that his prognosis is “tenuous.”
People described the audio as “disturbing” and “scary” given what it appeared to depict as genuinely happening in orbit, but NASA soon clarified it was just a deeply unnerving misunderstanding.
“This audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space and is not related to a real emergency,” NASA said. “The International Space Station crew members were in their sleep period at the time. All remain healthy and safe, and tomorrow’s spacewalk will start at 8 a.m. EDT as planned.”
SpaceX similarly clarified the decompression sickness scenario was just a test and that no one was in danger. “The crew training in Hawthorne is safe and healthy as is the Dragon spacecraft docked to the @space_station,” the company wrote in an X post.
In addition to Dragon, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is currently docked to the station. Starliner’s inaugural crew arrived on the ISS on June 6 and they were originally scheduled to return to Earth on Friday.
Over the weekend, NASA said they are now looking at a return of “no earlier” than next Tuesday, affording the Starliner crew time to perform a spacewalk while engineers complete the spacecraft’s systems. Boeing mentioned in a blog post Monday that teams are assessing how “five small leaks in the service module helium manifolds” could impact the rest of the mission, though they remained confident Starliner would have “plenty of margin to support the return trip from station.”
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