Source of International Space Station Leak Still Not Found, NASA Says
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Source of International Space Station leak still not found, NASA says - Business Insider:
Officials first noticed a leak last September, but they didn't do anything about it for nearly a year, since the leak wasn't major. Plus, station operations like space walks and crew exchanges kept crew members too busy to collect enough data about the issue.
Recently, however, technicians detected an increase to the already elevated leak rate. So NASA announced on August 20 that the three men aboard the station - NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner - would begin a hunt for the source.
That search is "taking longer than expected," NASA spokesman Daniel Huot told Business Insider last week.
Indeed, Huot said on Tuesday that technical teams were still reviewing the data collected by the crew. They've now ruled out most of the station's modules, Huot added, and should complete their review "in the coming days."
If specialists still can't pinpoint the leak after that, he said, they'll need a new action plan.
[...] In the event of an emergency on the space station, the crew members could return to Earth via the Soyuz MS-16 spaceship that's docked there. In a less extreme scenario, the crew could also cut off the leaking module and isolate it.
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