Suspected meteorite hits ISS, causes oxygen-leaking crack
The leak was found in the Soyuz craft, which is docked with the ISS, reported Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin. The official said air was being sucked out through a 1.5mm fracture, which may have been caused by a micrometeorite impact.
“The crew safety is not in danger,” he said. “The spaceship will be kept, a repair kit will be used.”
Rogozin said the malfunction will require a sealant to be applied from the inside of the ship, so no emergency spacewalk will be required.
The leak was slow and posed no danger to people on board, according to NASA, with mission control deciding that crew members could sleep before locating it.
After waking at the regular time, the six crew members started search procedures and finally localized the leak to the Russian side of the station.
The ISS regularly requires small repairs of various systems, although a hull breach, even a small one, is a rare occurrence. Crew members usually have to deal with leaks from internal tubing, electrical problems or failures of life support devices, including the space toilet, which experienced a series of malfunctions in 2008.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Dear readers and commenters,
We have implemented a new engine for our comment section. We hope the transition goes smoothly for all of you. Unfortunately, the comments made before the change have been lost due to a technical problem. We are working on restoring them, and hoping to see you fill up the comment section with new ones. You should still be able to log in to comment using your social-media profiles, but if you signed up under an RT profile before, you are invited to create a new profile with the new commenting system.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and looking forward to your future comments,
RT Team.