WASHINGTON — NASA says it’s learning a long-running air leak on a Russian Global Area Station module that lately doubled in magnitude, however that the leak does no longer recently pose a security possibility.
At a briefing Feb. 28 concerning the upcoming Staff-8 undertaking to the station, now scheduled for release at the night time of March 2, Joel Montalbano, NASA ISS program supervisor, mentioned the leak within the Zvezda carrier module greater a couple of week earlier than the Feb. 14 release of the Development MS-26 shipment spacecraft to the station. That spacecraft effectively docked to the aft finish of Zvezda two days later.
“The groups are observing it. We’re operating with our Russian colleagues on the next move,” he mentioned. “It’s no longer an affect to staff protection or car operations.”
Montalbano mentioned later that the leak has greater to a fee of greater than 0.9 kilograms of air misplaced in keeping with day, double the former fee detected in that a part of Zvezda. When Development docked to the station, he mentioned they saved the hatch closed for roughly 24 hours “to let the entirety hose down out” and notice if that affected the leak. “Not anything modified.”
The leak is in a vestibule referred to as PrK between the docking port and the remainder of the module. That phase will also be sealed off to attenuate the lack of air from the remainder of the station.
Montalbano mentioned that, as soon as the hatch was once opened after the Development docking, it was once saved open for roughly 5 days to permit crews to sell off the spacecraft, then it was once closed. The hatch will stay closed till early April. “We’re operating with our Russian colleagues at the subsequent steps,” he mentioned, together with long run plans to get entry to the vestibule and techniques to review the leak.
The PrK leak was once first detected in 2019 and has been broadly aanlyzed via Roscosmos and NASA. That integrated observe Kapton tape to check out to plug the leak, in addition to putting in gauges to measure stresses at the module that may be inflicting cracks.
In a November presentation to the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Robyn Gatens, ISS director at NASA Headquarters, famous the PrK leak fee on the time, about 0.45 kilograms in keeping with day, was once “manageable” and may well be addressed with measures like final the hatch. “It’s nonetheless smartly underneath our spec leak fee at the house station, however just a little upper than our historic leak fee.”
She performed down at that assembly any considerations a couple of catastrophic failure. “There’s a priority any time a construction is leaking and that’s why the group continues to analyze this and take a look at to comprehend it,” she mentioned. “The worst-case state of affairs will be the lack of that port for the gap station, however no longer a catastrophic, existential fear for the Global Area Station itself.”
The PrK leak has additionally been monitored via NASA’s Aerospace Protection Advisory Panel, which in some previous conferences has discussed its considerations concerning the leak and its implications for the station. The problem didn’t arise on the panel’s most up-to-date public assembly, additionally held Feb. 28, for the reason that panel didn’t get a briefing at the station at this quarterly assembly.
Comparable
