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Leak on ISS located?

According to Business Insider article , engineers have finally narrowed the location of the slow leak on ISS to the Russian Zvezda module.

NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, had already narrowed down the likely location of the leak to several modules on the station’s Russian side.

So astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner tested those modules by shutting the hatches between each one and using an ultrasonic leak detector to collect data through the night. The tool measures noise caused by airflow too quiet for humans to hear.

By Tuesday morning, they’d figured out that the leak is in the Zvezda Service Module, the main module on the station’s Russian side. Zvezda provides that half of the station with oxygen and drinkable water, and it’s also equipped with a machine that scrubs carbon dioxide from the air. The module contains the section’s sleeping quarters, dining room, refrigerator, freezer, and bathroom.

They don’t yet know where in the module the leak is located, but at least they know at last where to look.

This module was the second module launched to ISS, launching in 2000. Thus, the leak could not have come from any construction workers from the ground. More likely its age has resulted in something changing. This needs to be fixed, but at the moment the situation is not critical.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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10 comments

  • Spectrum Shift

    While these leaks are “small’, they illustrate , the long term exposure to space that spacecraft face on long missions, such as to mars, and beyond. The ISS continues to provide new data on such simple but obvious information. The ISS should be supported to provide this vital info, so missions beyond earth orbit have a better chance of success.

  • Ray Van Dune

    “This module was the second module launched to ISS, launching in 2000. Thus, the leak could not have come from any construction workers from the ground.”

    Please clarify this conclusion.

  • Ray Van Dune: Zvezda was built in the 1990s. It has been in orbit for twenty years. Thus the ground crews that built it really have nothing to do with this problem. The possibility of sabotage, as is still suspected in connection with the drilled hole in the Soyuz capsule last year, is ruled out.

  • wayne

    Every Mission from “Mission: Impossible”
    1966-1973
    https://youtu.be/_2cdTfuIoN0
    16:52

  • pzatchok

    Is this corrosion or or a bi-metal reaction?
    I know Aluminum does not work well with other metals.

  • LocalFluff

    @Spectrum Shift
    “While these leaks are “small’, they illustrate , the long term exposure to space that spacecraft face on long missions, such as to mars,”

    20 years trip to Mars? I don’t think so.

  • LocalFluff

    Talking about a leak, do you think that this hole sank this ship?
    (Just look at the images and proportions)
    https://nyhetsbyran.org/2020/09/28/bekraftat-estonia-har-ett-stort-hal-i-skrovet-som-uppges-vara-ett-spranghal/

    It’s about M/S Estonia that sank in the Baltic Sea September 1994, the most deadly disaster at sea since Titanic with 852 dead. Now this hole has been found in the wreck. The official story, that I think is the way it actually happened, is that the ship dropped its bow, which was foldable since it was a RoRo ship. And as a such it had a car deck from bow to stern without bulkheads (compartment walls). So when water is plowed in there, such a ship quickly becomes unstable and sinks. Waves were 5 meters high, another captain that night reported that the weather was “normally bad”. I grew up at that sea and normal weather here translates to bad weather in other places.

    But this little hole cannot have sunk this ship as quickly as it happened, for sure, or what do you think? It is a sensitive RoRo ship after all. But then the question is, how the heck did it get there? It does look like a ramming damage (given that the reconstruction from the new photos that I link to here is realistic, and that might be a big if!). Did an unseen ship collide with it at the same time as the bow ramp fell off? Strange.

    This is the radio communication recorded that night. I think it is horribly mismanaged! As a 19 year old I was a conscript that carried a radio on my back walking around in the forests trying to keep track of where the heck we are and are ordered to go. I spoke in it in that radio like the priest in Church. Everything said had to be formally perfectly correct. But now hear this!
    “22, is that degrees East, or minutes of the latitude?”
    If I as a teenager had made such a thing unclear, my officers would’ve invented curses never before heard in Hell, and I would not have eaten that day. Thus speak captains of 1000 crew sized cruising ships, be afraid!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5tbah19qo8

  • sippin_bourbon

    The leak is probably in the Zvezda module..

    Wait.. isn’t that where they were sheltering when they were hunting for the leak?

  • sippin_bourbon

    Local Fluff

    “But this little hole cannot have sunk this ship as quickly as it happened, for sure, or what do you think?”

    Yes actually, it good. Esp if at the water line.

    Depending on internal bulkheads below deck, it could have caused a massive and quick shift in the center of gravity.

    Just because a vessel is large, does not mean that it is safe from losing trim and stability.
    A few flooded compartments on one side of a vessel can cause massive issues.
    If so, it would have capsized quickly. Not the first Ferry to be overwhelmed.
    Also, if vehicles shift in rough weather, that can throw the stability as well.
    So maybe the hole caused a list.. and the vehicles on the deck slid as a result. Center of Gravity moves fast, and there is no chance to recover as the seas come over the gunwales.

    The El Faro went down fast. The Edmund Fitzgerald vanished so fast, no SOS was sent. The Skipper of the Arthur Anderson reported he saw her, then there was a large wave that blocked his view, and then she was gone.

    As for “did that cause it”. Hard to tell. Maybe the vessel got that as is struck the bottom, or a rock on the way down. If not, was it struck by another vessel or run aground in rough waters.

  • sippin_bourbon

    LF,

    I was unfamiliar with this story.
    Reading the report online, the bow visor separated from the hull in rough seas, and she started taking on water at the bow.
    In that case, that hole in the side was likely caused after the fact.

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