Yesterday afternoon, the ISS sprung an air leak detected on the Russian side of the orbiting lab. According to the space agency, the incident was…
Yesterday afternoon, the ISS sprung an air leak detected on the Russian side of the orbiting lab.
According to the space agency, the incident was “a minute pressure leak” uncovered yesterday afternoon by flight controllers back on Earth and seems to have occurred “on the Russian side of the orbital outpost.”
“The leak has been identified and repair procedures are ongoing,” the European Space Agency (ESA) noted in a blog post. “The crew are healthy and safe with weeks of air left in the International Space Station reserves.”
The first signs that there was something wrong were detected on August 29 at about 7 p.m. EDT, when flight controllers “noticed a reduction of pressure” on board the ISS, stated ESA officials.
Since the loss of pressure “was very small” and didn’t put the astronaut crew in any immediate danger, the six members of Expedition 56 — NASA’s Andrew Feustel (space station commander), Ricky Arnold, and Serena Auñón-Chancellor, ESA’s Alexander Gerst, and Roscosmos’ Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopyev — were given the all clear to rest for the night, while flight controllers continued to monitor the data.
“When the crew was awakened at its normal hour this morning, flight controllers at Mission Control in Houston and at the Russian Mission Control Center outside Moscow began working procedures to try to determine the location of the leak,” NASA officials said in a statement.
Small Air Leak Detected on International Space Station https://t.co/VTlSyRcy90 pic.twitter.com/EtDxBUsoad
— SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom) August 30,2018
One possible explanation for the air leak is that the Russian capsule may have been hit by a small piece of debris from space, which likely pierced its surface, allowing air to escape from inside the ISS, notes the British media outlet.
As of this writing, ground control engineers were still instructing the astronauts on how to seal the minuscule hole on the spacecraft.
“Program officials and flight controllers are continuing to monitor the situation as the crew works through its troubleshooting procedures,” said NASA.
