All news

Air leakage aboard space station possibly caused by fracture

The ISS crew reported to the Flight Control Center on Thursday morning that the supposed leakage spot had been traced with the help of a tea bag

MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. The air could be leaking from the International Space Station (ISS) through a fracture in the intersection compartment of the Russian Zvezda module, Cosmonaut Ivan Vagner reported to Russia’s Flight Control Center, according to a live broadcast on NASA’s website on Thursday.

"We have sent the photo and the video of the ‘scratch,’" the cosmonaut said.

The Flight Control Center requested the crew to continue monitoring the fracture.

The ISS crew reported to the Flight Control Center on Thursday morning that the possible air leakage had been traced with the help of a tea bag. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS that the Flight Control Center would soon give the crew instructions on holding checks to make sure that the cosmonauts had really found the air leak spot. Based on the work carried out, it will be possible to localize the air leak area, it said.

A source told TASS in August that the space station’s Russian-American crew was working on tracing an air leak aboard the orbital outpost. As Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos later told TASS, the cosmonauts had come to the conclusion that the air leak was located in the Russian Zvezda module but posed no threat to the crew’s life and health.