Scary... Audio Inadvertently Routed to NASA Livestream

Wednesday, at approximately 5:28 CDT, audio was heard on the NASA livestream feed from an internal ground-based simulation channel that a  crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS) was enduring symptoms of decompression sickness (DCS). 

The audio was misrouted to the NASA channel instead of its likely intended audience in the ground control center. 

On X (formerly Twitter) the ISS feed posted at 6:05 pm CDT that there was in fact no actual emergency happening on the station. Nonetheless, with millions of people following the channel probably at all times of the day and night this caused an immediate and immense outpouring of questions, anxiety, and concern that a real emergency was underway.

Most readers of Propwash probably understand that crews onboard the ISS and ground control crews routinely train – both separately and together – for all possible emergency scenarios and obviously decompression is a very serious one. Hopefully most of us are also not surprised when foul-ups like this happen. 

At the same time, it’s very understandable and normal if most of us are at least initially very surprised and concerned.

Many of the responses on X were, to put it charitably, less than happy with the explanation posted by whoever manages the ISS feed. We trust that most of us in the aerospace industry were just simply very relieved to hear that it was a false alarm. These things happen from time to time and we’re all very glad when we find out they’re not real.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/iss