No Way to Help
NASA had ways of taking control of certain key systems in the event that consoles aboard a ship or a space station are non-operational. But if there was a major problem like massive damage to the oxygen tanks, there was no way they could prepare a space shuttle in time to rescue the crew aboard the station.
In the best case scenario, such an operation would become a mission to retrieve the bodies. Fortunately, that’s not why the massive space station was contacting them. So why did the space crew seem so alarmed?