NASA discovered the air leak from the International Space Station (ISS) but was not serious and will investigate the cause later this week.
The leak poses no danger to the crew of the ISS station, NASA announced on August 20. The ISS station offers a warm and pleasant environment for the work of astronauts. However, the station is not completely waterproof. A small amount of air will leak over time which will require periodic pressurization by specialists.
In September 2019, NASA found more air leaks than average. However, this does not affect the normal operation of the station, and the amount of air leakage does not reach alarming levels. So NASA is monitoring the situation and focusing on other priority tasks before dealing with the leak, according to NASA spokesman Dan Huot.
The ISS station has been very busy in recent months. NASA and SpaceX have successfully launched the world’s first commercial passenger flight, the Demo-2. Astronauts also take space walks to replace old batteries and repair dark matter detectors.
Now that work on the ISS has been reduced, astronauts will close the hatch of each module so that the ground control station monitors the pressure of each module and identifies the source of the leaks. During this time, the astronauts will live in the Russian Zvezda module.
“It’s our most efficient way to find the leak because it’s too small. We do not know if it is in the United States or Russia. We won’t know until we look at the US data. This weekend’s test, ”said Huot.
Although the air leak rate is higher than normal, everything is under control and not dangerous for the crew, says NASA. The astronauts also learned how to handle the leak during a training period of about six months to prepare for living on the ISS station. According to NASA, astronaut schedules will change only slightly.
This is not the first time that the crew of the ISS station have investigated the leak. This leak was less serious than the 2018 incident, NASA said. In August 2018, the astronauts discovered an air leak due to a small hole about 2 mm wide in the Soyuz spacecraft coupled to the ISS station.
