False Smoke Alarm on Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - It turned out to be a false alarm. The Russian commander and his American crewmates were relieved about that, but irritated by an apparently unrelated computer problem that prevented them from quickly pulling up all the precautionary measures on a screen.

``That's not a very good situation to be in, is it?' complained astronaut Jim Voss, the flight engineer.

The crew's so-called Red Book, an inch-thick volume on emergency procedures, includes information on dealing with a fire as well as false alarms, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield.

Voss informed Mission Control that he and his crewmates had the Red Book out and were following its guidelines.

Space shuttle Discovery had undocked just 10 hours earlier, carrying homeward space station Alpha's first crew. The new three-person crew was winding down at the end of a long day when the smoke alarm went off in the U.S.-built Destiny laboratory.

Russian commander Yuri Usachev and his crew immediately rummaged through the lab, to make sure nothing was smoldering.

``We looked at the smoke detector. ... There was no smoke, no smell,' Usachev reported. ``It is obvious that this is a false alarm.' But he grumbled about the computer problems and noted: ``The situation is not very good.'

Usachev and Voss indicated they would like more documents sent up, to avoid any confusion in the future. Usachev's comments made it sound as though the crew had difficulty finding the on-board instructions to deal with the situation.

NASA believes that dust stirred up by the crew may have triggered the alarm or that the smoke detector may be defective. The three smoke detectors in the lab use laser beams to measure particles in the air, and are extremely sensitive. The smoke detector in question was later disconnected.

The air-circulating fans were turned off automatically when the alarm sounded, and came back on one by one. This safety feature, to smother any flames and prevent the spread of smoke, was not in place when a fire erupted aboard Russia's Mir station in 1997 and burned for 14 terrifying minutes.

Before going to sleep, astronaut Susan Helms told Mission Control she would have lots of questions the next day ``about what was going on with the computers when all this happened.'

The fleeting computer problem appeared to be unrelated to the false alarm, Hartsfield said.

Over on Discovery, meanwhile, everything was quiet as the seven astronauts and cosmonauts prepared for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

The forecast called for rain and high wind late Tuesday and early Wednesday, with only slightly better weather the following night.

The space station's first commander, Bill Shepherd, is returning to Earth along with his two Russian crewmates, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. They spent 41/2 months aboard the space station and were there for some of the biggest construction work of the project.

Giant solar wings and the Destiny laboratory arrived during their tour of duty.

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