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(CNN)Astronauts on the Worldwide House Station (ISS) have successfully narrowed down the source of a small air leak that had been increasing in dimension.
Kenny Todd, deputy supervisor of the space station, explained the leak was to start with detected far more than a year back but experienced elevated in the earlier few of months. A fresh round of testing overnight Monday unveiled the leak was in a support module in the Russian section, Todd mentioned in the course of a NASA briefing Tuesday.
“We are heading to consider and place a finer position on our troubleshooting prepare,” explained Todd, explaining that the group is dealing with the same leak as ahead of somewhat than a new one particular.
Russian space company Roscosmos verified that the leak was coming from a single of its support modules.
“At present the lookup is underway to precisely identify the leak,” the agency tweeted. “The predicament poses no risk to the crew’s life and health and isn’t going to hinder the station ongoing crewed operation.”
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Roscomos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner carried out the onboard checks.
“The dimension of the leak discovered right away has considering the fact that been attributed to a momentary temperature change aboard the station with the over-all fee of leak remaining unchanged,” NASA said in a web site article Tuesday.
When crew associates working experience cozy pressure even though residing in the orbiting laboratory, the room station does working experience small air leaks above time.
Standard repressurization is doable many thanks to nitrogen tanks that are bundled on cargo resupply missions that supply them to the place station.
The upcoming resupply mission is owing to arrive this weekend. The uncrewed Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft will launch from the Wallops Flight Facility in the US state of Virginia on Thursday night time.
Then the crew associates will rotate. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will start from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct 14 and dock at the area station, although Cassidy, Vagner and Ivanishin will depart the area station on October 21 and return to Earth.
The trio will have spent 195 days with each other on the house station immediately after launching in April.
Then, on October 23, the SpaceX Crew-one mission will start to the place station, carrying NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese house company astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
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