OREANDA-NEWS. Pavel Vlasov, the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center, the Hero of the Russian Federation, said to the journalists of one of national news agencies that Russia sent its comments to US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) because of the release of isopropyl alcohol to the International Space Station (ISS) atmosphere after the docking of the Dragon-2 spacecraft on March 2019. “We had given all comments and asked all questions,” Vlasov said.

He noted that all questions of the Russian side upon the work of private spaceships from the United States of America were not to be asked directly to SpaceX Corporation launching them, but to NASA, which was a mediator of the process.

As for isopropyl alcohol, its narcotic effect on the human is twice as high as ethanol effect. Moreover, isopropyl alcohol is very toxic.

The crew of the ISS sensed an odour of this substance on March 3 after opening the hatch during docking with the station of the American unmanned spacecraft Dragon 2 which delivered 182 kilograms of food and equipment for the ISS crew. The cosmonauts took air samples with an analyzer that showed a high level of isopropyl alcohol. Then its concentration in the atmosphere of the ISS increased immediately to 6 milligrams per 1 cubic metre. This value does not exceed the permissible limits, however on the order from Earth specialists the cosmonauts switched air purification systems on, and the concentration of isopropyl alcohol dropped to 2 milligrams per 1 cubic metre.