An International Space Station Leak Is Getting Worse, NASA Confirms (arstechnica.com) 58
Ars Technica reports NASA officials operating the International Space Station "are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station" — because it's leaking.
The "PrK" tunnel connecting a larger module to a docking port "has been leaking since September 2019... In February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day." A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem...
Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak. "Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds," the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states. The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three.
Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency's 5x5 "risk matrix" to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.
"According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable."
The article adds that the Space Station should reach its end of life by either 2028 or 2030, and NASA "intends to transition its activities in low-Earth orbit onto private space stations," and has funded Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space for initial development.
"There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030."
The "PrK" tunnel connecting a larger module to a docking port "has been leaking since September 2019... In February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day." A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem...
Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak. "Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds," the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states. The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three.
Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency's 5x5 "risk matrix" to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence.
"According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable."
The article adds that the Space Station should reach its end of life by either 2028 or 2030, and NASA "intends to transition its activities in low-Earth orbit onto private space stations," and has funded Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space for initial development.
"There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030."
Don't worry (Score:1)
Space is infinitely full of resources, they just need to open the space window and take them!
Tyre slime (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
While actual tire slime wouldn't be practical, maybe some sort of aerosol equivalent?
Particals of a specific size range such that they migrate towards the leak, are big enough to get stuck, blocking it, but small enough they get into the leak some, providing some depth.
You could also make it UV reactive, so they can spray it into the tube, wait, then vacuum up the particles and look for the glowing spot.
Re: Don't worry (Score:1)
What if bacteria is actually the end state of evolution we are stumbling towards?
Bada bing (Score:4, Funny)
Finding it. (Score:2)
Re:Finding it. (Score:5, Funny)
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This is marked funny, but there might be something there. Obviously not soapy water, but you could imagine using re-positionable adhesive to put a plastic patch, maybe a meter or two square on different parts of the exterior and looking for the patch to balloon up. That's just one possible method
Re: (Score:3)
Another great idea is to make a solution of soapy water and apply it outside; wherever bubbles form, there is a leak
It won't work. How are you going to figure out where to apply it?
Better to put the whole thing under water and you'll see where it leaks right away.
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Parent should also be modded funny.
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They should send them a tub of Flex Seal. If we learned anything from those commercials, that stuff can stop pretty much any leak.
Plus, you KNOW that they're dying to use the NASA footage of it being applied in their next set of ads.
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Understand you are being fictitious, but flex seal will not stop a leak under pressure
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Well someone didn't watch the commercial.
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From the outside in? No, it won't. So you wouldn't want to go on a spacewalk and apply flexseal to the outside of the leak point.
From the inside out? It might, depending on what it does when it's in the affected area. My guess is that whatever is in it that makes it flow would boil off and ruin it when it met vacuum, but I haven't done literally any research into what's in it so that's just a WAG.
Fix-a-flat will stop a leak under pressure. Again, it's applied from the inside of the pressure vessel. Slime, s
Re:Finding it. (Score:5, Informative)
Why not put a marker substance in the tunnel and close it and watch the outside where the marker substance leaks out.
The leak needs to be fixed on the inside.
If you put sealant or tape over the outside, the pressure will push it away.
If you put it inside, the pressure will push the sealant or tape tight against the leak.
Finding the outside leak doesn't tell you where the inside leak is because the walls are filled with 10 cm of urethane foam between the inner and outer shells.
The leak in the inner shell could be several meters from the leak in the outer shell.
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Once they find it, chewing gum ought to do it!
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Once they find it, chewing gum ought to do it!
Duct tape.
They're aerospace engineers.
Re:Finding it. (Score:4, Informative)
Why not put a marker substance in the tunnel and close it and watch the outside where the marker substance leaks out.
That seems quite logical. You would think that you could manage it just with very humid air. Out in space you would expect it to form ice crystals and be quite bright. So you would try illuminating with a bright light to see where it is. Other possibilities are neon, and illuminating with x-rays and/or high-range UV light, then you should be able to spot it with infrared. With such a big leak, it really does seem like there should be a way to spot that plume in space.
Overall, it sounds like their approach to this is best classified under the "benign neglect" model. Simply accept that the problem exists and not worry about it unless the problem gets so bad that you can't replace the lost atmosphere fast enough. Of course, current costs are between about $9000-$18000 per pound to get supplies to the ISS, so we are talking about $33,300 to $66,600 per day worth of air. More when you consider it has to be shipped in air bottles that add extra weight. If this has been going on for five years then, assuming a roughly linear increase in the leak, that's roughly one and a half tons of air. $30 million to $60 million worth of air so far. Maybe that's not so much money when compared against the other costs of the ISS, but it still seems like a cost-benefit analysis suggests doing more to find and fix the leak.
Also, part of the whole point of the ISS is supposed to be to learn to live and work in space. Dealing with leaks is exactly the sort of thing you want to learn how to handle if you want to do that. So it seems like finding and stopping the leak is exactly the sort of thing they should be prioritizing. Not just to deal with the current leak, but to develop policies and procedures and experience for doing it in future.
Rear main seal on a car engine (Score:2)
Amazing that the International Space Station has such a thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Amazing that the International Space Station has such a thing.
You mean a leak? Not really surprising at all. One of the downsides of the modular design. The modules aren't welded together. They're clamped together with seals to stop leaks. Over decades, those seals are going to leak. Even welds can leak if they develop cracks, etc. but seals especially are going to get brittle and cracked as they age and leak more and more, and they don't really have a procedure to replace the seals that I've ever heard of. There are 18 modules in the station and it has a pretty huge
Meaning of the rear main seal car analogy (Score:2)
A rear main seal isn't just something that leaks, it is something that by the time it leaks, it costs more to repair than your car is worth. The rear main seal is where your crankshaft connects to the transmission, and you either have to lift the engine out or drop the transmission down to repair it. You either junk the car or put up with putting oil in it that will end up on the garage floor. Or dripped everywhere you drive the car.
The space station leak is thought to be unaccessible under a blanket
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A rear main seal isn't just something that leaks, it is something that by the time it leaks, it costs more to repair than your car is worth.
If you have to take it to a mechanic. It all depends on whether or not you can do your own work and if you mind putting in the labor. You don't actually need to take out the engine or drop the transmission in every vehicle to get to it. Either way, if you're meticulous and diligent, doing it yourself is practical enough. I've taken out engines and transmissions before and engines without needing a lot of specialized equipment. Just some two by fours and a makeshift lever/rope system. Of course the last time
Two by fours and makeshift lever/rope system (Score:2)
We're talking about NASA here, which junked their last spacecraft over some leaks.
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Oh I know. The reality of the organization does not live up to the promise.
Re: Finding it. (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m not sure they supply air bottles, I thought they produced it up there from electrolysis of water and Lithium-Oxide generators that also absorb CO2.
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They have those. Of course, then they have to ship water, which still comes in containers, plus there's the extra hydrogen you need to dump, so that's some more weight. As for other means of production like oxygen candles, etc. those require shipping a whole lot of extra weight beyond the oxygen. They still deliver pressurized air bottles to the ISS though. Also, it should be noted that oxygen is not the only concern. The ISS atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, just like on Earth. That is lost to space through l
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From what I can find, and that strokes with documentaries I saw, which my previous post was based on, the CO2 scrubbers (LiOH) remove the CO2, which has a side effect of producing water which the solar panels turn into oxygen through electrolysis and the hydrogen gets ejected. Water otherwise is pretty much a closed loop (meaning, waste liquid gets recycled into drinkable water). There seems to also be a supply of mostly nitrogen and some oxygen through high pressure tanks and a system oxygen candles by the
Re: (Score:2)
From what I can find, and that strokes with documentaries I saw, which my previous post was based on, the CO2 scrubbers (LiOH) remove the CO2, which has a side effect of producing water which the solar panels turn into oxygen through electrolysis and the hydrogen gets ejected.
Any process that makes water from CO2 is going to need hydrogen from somewhere, so I'm not sure they would keep ejecting the hydrogen in that case. Also, that's all well and good for recycling oxygen, but it does not help in the case of a leak because the CO2 would also leak out. It can't do anything for replacing oxygen. Or nitrogen for that matter.
Water otherwise is pretty much a closed loop (meaning, waste liquid gets recycled into drinkable water).
Water is more or less a closed loop, but it's not perfect. Based on what I've seen their recycling increases their water by a factor of about 10X to 20X, but th
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I'm going to put on my space engineer hat (that I'm totally making up, I am horribly unqualified):
Turn off the ventilation in the affected area. Seal it up with a device that can remotely release a small amount of smoke (something benign to both human and the ventilation system). If there's no problem, you'll have a little sphere of hovering smoke.
But we know there IS a problem, so once the volume is sealed and normal ventilation cut off, the only airflow will be towards the leak. You can follow the smoke
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Ayep. That might be why they call out 3.7Kg / day as a tipping point for the problem. And why they just lived with it for a long time. A tiny leak is really hard to find. A BIG leak is really easy to find. NASA might be letting it grow into a real problem so that there is enough of a leak to help them find it (or them, nothing says this is ONE leak only). They may indeed use that technique you outlined to track it down.
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Moon base (Score:2)
We've stayed the shit out of low earth orbit already. It's time we setup a base on the moon. Earth orbit is shitty. Build a permanent lunar base. I wouldn't mind going there for vacation.
Re: Moon base (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Moon base (Score:2)
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A leak would be less of an issue on the Moon.
Lunar regolith is 40% oxygen.
You'd still need to fix it to prevent the loss of nitrogen and water, but a pinhole leak wouldn't be life-threatening.
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It's the Russian module having the leak, dumbass.
Re: I know a fix! (Score:2)
It's for time for ISS to go (Score:1)
ISS was launched in the late 90s and was originally designed to last 12 years. Both, Russia and USA are holding onto it only because neither one has another active piloted space project. It's a space station that exists only to justify NASAs massive bureaucracy. There is no real science done there, it's a massive waste of money.
IIS should be deorbited as a partial Kremlin asset (Score:2, Insightful)
Science is not apolitical and the desperately naive idea of sharing aerospace tech with the greatest enemy of civilization needs to end.
ISS is a machine which can be replaced. Hardware is not sacred. Humans have eternity to explore space. Nothing of value would be lost by deorbiting ISS.
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ISS is a machine which can be replaced. Hardware is not sacred. Humans have eternity to explore space. Nothing of value would be lost by deorbiting ISS.
ISS has sentimental value. I operate a beluga liner and give all kinds of passengers (some wanted for various crimes) rides to various tourist attractions throughout the galaxy. A tour of ISS in sol would be worth more than a few credits at least.
Trust me it'll be well worth the effort a thousand years from now. The billion dollars required to boost its orbit is basically the same you'll spend on a controlled deorbit anyway.
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Put a house spider in there (Score:2)
They love to find leaks. Plus you get some interesting spider science.
ASK BOEING (Score:1)
Sudden depressurization (Score:2)
LOL (Score:1)
Units (Score:2)
3.7. Not bad, not terrible (Score:1)
Send up a can of Flexseal (Score:2)