Cosmonauts Patch Small Air Leak on International Space Station
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Cosmonauts patch small air leak on International Space Station:
Cosmonauts are making progress in the fight against the small air leak that has beleaguered the International Space Station for months, according to Russian reports.
The leak was first detected in September 2019 but was too low a priority for NASA and Roscosmos to address until August of this year given the short staffing and high activity rates at the orbiting laboratory, according to a previous statement from the U.S. space agency. In August, NASA announced a few measures that Roscosmos, the U.S. agency's Russian counterpart, was undertaking to track down the leak's location.
[...] Now, cosmonauts on the space station report that they tracked down the leak yesterday (Oct. 15) and attempted to patch it, according to reports from Russia's government-owned news service, Tass.
[...] The leak is located in a compartment of the Russian Zvezda module, as previous work on the orbiting laboratory had suggested. Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, who has been living in the facility since April, called it a "scratch," according to the Tass report, which also suggested the crew used a tea bag to track down the precise location of the leak but did not provide additional details about the process.
The cosmonauts also attempted to patch the leak, but their reports to mission control today (Oct. 16) suggest it might not hold, Tass reported: air loss has slowed, but the module is still losing air pressure, according to their measurements. The crew suggested reaching out to their American colleagues - currently Chris Cassidy and Kate Rubins - for a different type of patch mechanism.
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