Crew safe after patching air leak on space station
International Space Station astronauts were able to patch a hole on the Russian side of the orbiting laboratory Thursday afternoon, which had been causing a small air leak since it was discovered the night before.
“The International Space Station’s cabin pressure is holding steady,” a Thursday afternoon update on NASA’s space station blog said. “All station systems are stable, and the crew is planning to return to its regular schedule of work on Friday.”
Flight controllers noticed a loss of pressure on the space station while the six crew members slept Wednesday night. They determined, however, that there was no immediate danger to the crew and allowed them to continue sleeping, according to updates on NASA’s space station blog.
On Thursday morning,
traced the leak to the Russian side of the station, coming from a hole .2 centimeters in diameter (about the thickness of a penny) in the upper section of the Soyuz spacecraft attached to station. This section of the spacecraft — which arrived in June carrying NASA’s Serena AuñónChancellor, Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev and European Space Agency’s Alexander Gerst — does not return to Earth.
Designers believe the hole was caused by a small rock particle, or “micrometeorite,” hitting the station, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos, said in a statement.
Micrometeorite impacts are commonplace in low Earth orbit, where the space station flies. In fact, NASA in December 2017 called this area “an orbital space junkyard.” Millions of pieces of space junk — mostly comprised of human-generated objects such as tiny flecks of paint and pieces from spacecrafts and parts of rockets — fly through this area, and they don’t have to be large to cause damage.
That’s because the “space junk” is moving incredibly fast, reaching speeds of 18,000 mph, or about seven times faster than a fired bullet, according to NASA. To protect itself and its precious cargo from serious damage, the station has numerous shielding elements, according to Space Safety Magazine, a trade publication put out by the International Association for Advancement of Space Safety and the International Space Safety Foundation.
But damage does happen. The space station is covered in pockmarks from these direct hits, as were returning space shuttles before that program was shuttered in 2011. In 2012, for example, a micrometeorite hit the station’s cupola — a panoramic, domeshaped control tower with windows on all sides — though it caused minimal damage.
Last year, scientists sent a space debris sensor to the station, where it will monitor damage caused by debris smaller than the thickness of a penny.
By noon Thursday, crew members had plugged the hole, which could have resulted in total air loss in 18 days, using epoxy on a gauze wipe. NASA and the Russians disagreed over whether this method should be used, with American crew member Drew Feustel arguing that the sealant should be tested back on Earth before it was used to patch the hole.
“We’ve got one shot at this, and we don’t want to screw it up,” he said to mission control in Houston during a discussion that was livestreamed.
But the sealant appeared to be holding Thursday. Officials plan to check on it again in the morning, once the sealant has set.
The space station, which rotating crew members have called home since 2000, has experiastro nauts enced problems in the past. In 2004, an air pressure drop was caused by a leaking flex hose in the U.S. laboratory, CNN reported at the time. And another air leak occurred on the U.S. side in 2007, Scientific American reported.
Over the years, the space station also has been plagued by numerous ammonia leaks and computer problems.
Federal officials are currently discussing ending support for the space station in the near future. President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposal for NASA would end federal funding for the space station by 2024. In that plan, which Congress still needs to approve , commercial entities would take over operation of the station by 2025.
But NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine admitted earlier this month that the cutoff date might not be feasible. Some commercial companies have already expressed interest in this idea, he told the Houston Chronicle, and they’ve submitted plans to the agency on how to accomplish this feat. NASA personnel are currently reviewing them.
“It sounds really difficult and it is, no doubt, really difficult, but there definitely is interest,” he said. But “that doesn’t mean it can be done and it doesn’t mean it can be done in seven years.”