Short of finding you have an foreign shapeshifter on gameboard that ’s mimicking the face of one of your crewmates , there are n’t many bad scenario that an astronaut can feel on the International Space Station ( ISS ) than find out you ’ve sprung a wetting . Or at least , so you ’d think .
Yesterday , NASA announcedthat astronauts on the United States Orbital Segment ( USOS ) of the ISS will head over to the Russian Orbital Segment ( ROS ) while they seek to settle a outflow this weekend . NASA first noticed meter reading of a escape back in September 2019 , but because of regular operations such asarrivals , spacewalks , anddepartures , it took time to gather enough information to confirm a news leak above normal melody expiration pace .
The ISS is in fact always leaking very slimly , demand repressurization by atomic number 7 tanks in rules of order to keep the aura pressure comfortable for the astronauts on board . That escape rate has increase slightly , making it necessary for NASA to locate and hopefully repair the source of the outflow . To do this , the members of the Expedition 63 foreign mission will head over and join the cosmonauts in the ROS . While they have their weekend away , NASA and its outside partners will supervise the air pressure in each module .
There have been leaks before on the ISS , where the same condom procedures were stick with . Back in 2018 , NASA spot a reduction in pressure on the space station while the astronauts slept . They eventually locate a 2 - millimetre - wide ( 0.08 inches ) hollow in the Soyuz Cordell Hull . European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst temporarily secure the problem byjamming a digit in the holelike he was in a animated cartoon before the astronauts moved onto a more long - term solution ; cover the hole in sticky tape ( of the high - enduringness variety show used in space , this is n’t the kind of thing you ’d use to envelop gifts ) .
At first , the escape was suspected to be triggered by a micrometeoroid , before it was set to be theresult of a drill . What exactly have the cakehole and at what stage of fabrication is unclear , as Roscosmos has been tight - lipped about it . Dmitry Rogozin , head of the Russian space delegacy , told a youth science league in 2019"we know exactly what happened , but we wo n’t assure you anything " .
The novel leak , while it might fathom frightening , poses no threat to the crew or ISS , NASAsaid . It sounds dramatic , but the only real consequence will be that the astronaut have a sleepover in the Russian segment of the ISS .
