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Russian cosmonauts face no threat after air leak at orbital outpost

A source earlier told TASS that sensors in the Russian segment of the ISS registered an air leak at the space station
The International Space Station NASA
The International Space Station
© NASA

MOSCOW, August 20. /TASS/. Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner face no threat aboard the International Space Station (ISS) following an air leak at the orbital outpost, the press office of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Thursday.

A source earlier told TASS that sensors in the Russian segment of the ISS registered an air leak at the space station.

"There is no danger for the crew and the station," Roscosmos said.

The International Space Station (ISS) crew will move to the Zvezda Service Module for three days, Roscosmos informed TASS. "According to the Lead Operational Control Team for ISS Russian Segment, on Friday the crewmembers will move to the Zvezda module to set up pressure control in the US segment," the agency said.

Roscosmos clarified that the procedure "is outlined in the board documentation and is a joint decision by the operational control teams of the US and the Russian segments of the International Space Station."

A source familiar with the situation told TASS that the ISS Russian-US crew was working to localize the air leak. As the source specified, the specialists are planning to sequentially seal off the station’s modules to determine where the pressure was falling.

As the source said, "the air leak was registered by the sensors of the station’s Russian segment for measuring the content of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the station’s atmosphere."

Last time, an air leak occurred at the ISS on August 30, 2018 when a drop in pressure was detected at the space station. It turned out that the pressure plunge had been caused by an air leak after the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station, coming from a hole in the spacecraft’s habitation module. A few days later, experts on Earth concluded that the hole had been drilled from inside the Soyuz.