International Space Station smoke alarms go off, Russian cosmonauts continue spacewalk

The smoke alarms went off when the space station's batteries recharged.
A mockup of the U.S. Destiny Laboratory at the International Space Station is seen inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility during a media preview for an upcoming public open house at NASA's Johnson Space Center on October 24, 2018 in Houston, Texas.
By Natalia Mittelstadt

Following smoke alarms going off early Thursday in the Russian section of the International Space Station, two Russian cosmonauts continued with their scheduled spacewalk.

The crew noticed smoke and the smell of burnt plastic, The Associated Press reported. Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, said the alarm went off in the Zvezda module of the station and happened when the ISS's batteries were recharging.

The Russian space agency also said the crew activated the air filters and continued their "night rest" after the air quality normalized.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov are carrying out a scheduled five-hour-long spacewalk that started at 11 a.m. EDT, The Hill reported.

The purpose of the spacewalk is to continue the integration of the Nauka science lab that Russia built, which docked with ISS in July, according to The AP. After it docked, the lab had accidentally fired its engines, causing the space station to be briefly knocked out of position, which Russian space officials said was the result of a software failures.