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posted by mrpg on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the laika dept.

Ars Technica:

Last week, a pressure leak occurred on the International Space Station. It was slow and posed no immediate threat to the crew, with the atmosphere leaving the station at a rate such that depressurization of the station would have taken 14 days.

Eventually, US and Russian crew members traced the leak to a 2mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle that had flown to the space station in June. The module had carried Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, and NASA's Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor.

[...] The drama might have ended there, as it was initially presumed that the breach had been caused by a tiny bit of orbital debris. However, recent Russian news reports have shown that the problem was, in fact, a manufacturing defect. It remains unclear whether the hole was an accidental error or intentional. There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test.


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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Thursday September 06 2018, @02:42PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday September 06 2018, @02:42PM (#731326)
    They do have pressure sensors and leak detectors, although I'm not sure if they are able to operate per-compartment (assuming the internal hatches are closed) or cover the station as a whole. Still, even with a starting point of 1 atmosphere differential, it's going to take some time for 388 cubic metres of air to leak out through a drill hole that might be partially bunged up with glue, and if the internal pressure drops as a result then the rate of air loss will drop off as well, prolonging the depressurization time. The articles are a bit light on detail, but it seems once the sensors tripped they just assumed another micro-meteorite breach - it's far from the first such hole - and noted that the pressure drop didn't require *immediate* attention - quite how long they did have is one of the details that is currently missing. Another poster suggested spraying some water vapour as a way to locate the leak, although I'm not sure if that's what was actually done or not, although I think it should work and seems practical enough. Also, don't forget that the air will be circulated and scrubbed to control CO2, and the ISS is quite noisy with various pumps and so on - if the leak was in accordance with normal airflow patterns it's entirely possible the additional "breeze" could go unnoticed by the crew.

    The only reason this probably made the more mainstream news outlets was that the scratches around the hole led to accusations of some form of cover-up/sabotage. Were it not for that it would probably have little more than a footnote in the ISS's business as usual coverage.
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