Space station crew rush to clean up toxic spill

HOUSTON – An oxygen generator on the international space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant Monday, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the eight-year-old orbiting outpost.

NASA said the crew members’ lives were never in any danger. They cleaned up the spill with towels. A charcoal filter scrubbed the irritant out of the air. And within a couple of hours, life aboard the station 220 miles above Earth was nearly back to normal.

But it was the biggest scare this smooth-running space station has had.

Although it paled in comparison to two fires and a collision on two previous Russian space stations and the nearly fatal explosion on Apollo 13, the incident served as a reminder of how life-and-death emergencies can come out of nowhere. It is why an emergency space capsule is always at the outpost in case of a sudden order to abandon ship.

NASA never came close to ordering the crew to leave the station, space station program manager Mike Suffredini said. But astronauts did reveal they were worried.

NASA and the Russian space agency were investigating what caused the problem.