NASA YouTube gaffe scares viewers into thinking an astronaut could perish in space


The US space agency accidentally aired a training message on its YouTube stream, saying an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had a “tenuous” chance of survival.

Space enthusiasts had their heart rates spike after NASA’s official livestream played a message indicating an astronaut aboard the ISS suffered from decompression sickness in space and had weak chances of survival.

Decompression sickness causes bubbles to form in blood and tissue due to changes in external pressure. However, the dire message was aired by accident. According to an official ISS account on X, the audio came “from a simulation audio channel on the ground.”

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“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,” the ISS explained.

The crew of humanity’s only inhabited space laboratory was sleeping at the time when the message was misrouted to NASA’s YouTube stream.

“You had a bunch of us about to turn blue,” one user shared on X.

“That’s a relief, super glad that everyone is ok and safe and healthy,” another platform’s user said.

The agency insisted that the ISS crew would continue its schedule and perform a spacewalk on June 13th.

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