NASA clarifies no emergency onboard ISS after medical drill mistakenly broadcasted

NASA has announced that there was no emergency on the International Space Station (ISS). This comes after a medical drill was accidentally broadcasted. On Wednesday, NASA's official livestream aired audio from a medical drill, making it seem like a crew member was in severe medical distress.  NASA had to to clarify the situation.

“There is no emergency situation going on aboard the International Space Station,” NASA’s ISS account posted on X. “Audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space.”

At 5:28 PM CDT, NASA's ISS livestream was interrupted, displaying a message that the feed was “temporarily interrupted” and would resume once the “connection is reestablished.”

Shortly after, a person appeared to be giving emergency instructions to the ISS crew about a "commander" experiencing decompression sickness. The speaker, a flight surgeon from SpaceX's mission control center in Hawthorne, California, advised:

“So if we could get the commander back in his suit, get it sealed … for suited hyperbaric treatment … Prior to sealing, closing the visor, and pressurizing the suit, I would like you to check his pulse one more time.”

Flight surgeons are specialized physicians in aerospace medicine, based at mission control centers, according to NASA.

Hundreds of people watching the livestream on YouTube saw the simulation as the “commander’s” condition seemed to worsen. The flight surgeon mentioned concerns about severe decompression sickness, calling the prognosis “relatively tenuous.”

This incident quickly gained attention on social media. SpaceX later confirmed that it was indeed a test conducted in California and assured that all training crew were “safe and healthy.”

NASA emphasized that the simulation was not linked to any real emergency and that the ISS crew was actually in their “sleep period” when the drill was aired. They confirmed that “all remain healthy and safe,” and the scheduled spacewalk would proceed at 8 AM EDT the following day.