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Isolation of ISS crew in Russian modules to search for air leak ends

The space corporation said that all data concerning the air parameters on board had been transmitted to specialists on the ground

MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/. The International Space Station's crew have ended a brief isolation inside the Russian segment of the ISS during the search for an air leak, the Russian space corporation Roscosmos said in a news release on Monday.

"The crew of the 64th long-term expedition to the International Space Station have completed the operations to open the hatches and now resumed standard work inside all of the station's segments," the news release runs.

The space corporation said that all data concerning the air parameters on board had been transmitted to specialists on the ground.

"The ISS mission control group is currently studying the obtained data in an attempt to identify the degree and place of the leak on the basis of accurate data, obtained as a result of the crew's isolation inside the Russian segment of the station," Roscosmos said.

Earlier, a source in the main control group of the Russian segment of the ISS told TASS it was too early to say where the air was escaping from the station and in what amounts. Pressure inside the US segment was checked while all support and payload equipment was turned off. The source speculated that the leak might happen when this equipment was turned on.

During the isolation, Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner and US astronaut Chris Cassidy could move about the modules Zarya, Zvezda and Poisk, cargo spacecraft Progress MS and manned spacecraft Soyuz MS.

In August, a source told TASS that the Russian-US crew of the ISS was trying to localize an air leak, "registered by instruments of the station's Russian segment, which identified changes in the content of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air." The ISS crew then moved to the Russian modules for three days to let specialists monitor pressure inside the US segment.