The teams of the International Space Station (ISS) detected today, Thursday, a small air leak on the orbital platform that the crew is trying to locate and correct.
“On the ISS a microfuge was detected from the station’s atmosphere. Work is being carried out to locate them. The specialists plan to consecutively close the station modules to establish where there is a pressure drop, ”a source from the Russian space industry told the TASS agency.
According to the source, “the air leak was detected by the equipment of the Russian segment of the station that measures the amount of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the station”
For its part, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, reported that this Friday the crew will move to the Zvezdá (Star) module to carry out pressure measurements on the modules of the US segment.
“Said procedure is set out in the on-board documentation and is a joint decision of the control groups of the US and Russian segments of the EEI,” the entity said in a statement.
The cosmonauts and astronauts will stay in this module for three days, during which they will carry out the planned tasks.
“There is no threat to the crew or the station,” adds Roscosmos.
In August 2018, a small air leak took place in the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft, attached to the Russian segment of the ISS, which did not pose a danger to the crew either.
After conducting various investigations, it was found that the failure was not caused by the impact of a micrometeorite, as was initially assumed, but rather was a hole drilled after the device was assembled.
After more than a year of investigations, Roscosmos decided to classify the results and the director general of the Russian space agency, Dmitri Rogozin, said that they had identified the cause, but that they would not make it public.
The ISS, a project worth more than 150,000 million dollars (about 127,000 euros) in which 16 nations participate, currently consists of 14 permanent modules and orbit at a speed of more than 27,000 kilometers per hour at a distance of 400 kilometers from the earth.
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