A small air leak spotted in the ISS forces astronauts to spend the weekend in the Russian segment of the station. Time for NASA to find the source of the problem.
Expedition 63 crew members are not in immediate danger. Truth be told, this small leak was first spotted in September 2019. Still, the air loss rate wasn't high enough to worry NASA. From then on, more important routine operations continued as normal, while operators kept an eye on the infamous leak problem.
It must be said that the agency has been particularly busy over the past few months. NASA and SpaceX have indeed experienced their first commercial mission (Demo-2). Maintenance operations also required astronauts to perform several spacewalks. One was to repair a broken dark matter detector and others were to replace the station's batteries.
These complex operations went perfectly, while the Demo-2 mission was successfully completed a few weeks ago. The next one (the Crew-1 mission) not being scheduled until at least next October, NASA has decided that it was time to take care of this famous leak.
"Now that we have a relatively quiet period in operations (spacewalks, vehicle traffic), the crew will be closing the hatches of each module “, Agency spokesman Dan Huot told Space.com. “Operators on the ground can then monitor the pressure of each module to isolate the source of the leak.
At this time, the agency doesn't know for sure whether the leak is for the US or Russian segment, and they won't know until they investigate the tests scheduled until Monday.
For this reason, Expedition 63 crew members will spend the weekend in the Russian segment of the orbiting laboratory, inside the module service Zvezda . For your information, it was in this same module that the crews stayed for the first time when the ISS was under construction in the early 2000s.
The latter always includes part of the Station's life equipment and can normally accommodate two crew members. Note that at present, the crew includes three men:astronaut Christopher Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. However, the crew will have access to the Poisk mini-module, on which the Soyuz MS-16 is attached.
As a reminder, an air leak was also was discovered two years ago in a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the ISS. After investigation, Expedition 56 crew members finally found a two-millimetre-wide hole in the ship's hull . NASA officials pointed out that this new leak was definitely smaller than the one encountered in 2018.
