Roscosmos specialists detect air leak onboard ISS, no threat to station or crewmembers

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Roscosmos specialists detect air leak onboard ISS, no threat to station or crewmembers - state corporation

MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Specialists have detected an air leak onboard the International Space Station (ISS), but its crewmembers are not in danger, Roscosmos said on Wednesday.

"Indeed, specialists have detected an air leak onboard the ISS," the state corporation's press service said.

"There is no threat to crewmembers or the station itself," it said.

The crewmembers carry out regular work to detect and fix possible leak areas, and the data coming from the station is transmitted to specialists for analysis in a normal manner, it said.

Earlier on Wednesday, NASA International Space Station ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano said that the air leak in the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has doubled,.

"There is an area at the end of the International Space Station that we've seen a leak. There is a small leak. We saw a leak increase about a week before the recent Progress launch and docking," Montalbano told a briefing on the new Crew-8 mission to the ISS.

"We are working with our Russian colleagues on the next steps. Not an impact right now on the crew safety or vehicle operations," he said.

Air has started leaking twice as fast from the transition chamber of the Zvezda module, Montalbano said.

It was reported in August 2020 that an air leak had been found on the ISS. The station's crew managed to contain it in the transition chamber of the Zvezda module. In October 2020, the cosmonauts found the first crack, some four centimeters in size, and fixed it using temporary measures. After this, the pressure started falling more slowly on the ISS, but the leak remained.

On November 15, 2021, cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov said he had found another suspicious place in the cover of a compartment of the Zvezda module where an air leak had previously been found.

Roscosmos said in December 2021 that the cosmonauts had found "the possible last place of the air leak in the intermediate chamber of the Zvezda service module of the Russian segment of the ISS."