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ISS May Have A Leak

Posted by timothy on from the panicking-wastes-O2 dept.

Rio writes "The International Space Station is experiencing a slow, steady drop in air pressure, and American and Russian flight controllers are investigating possible causes of the leak. The Local 6 News report says Mission Control notified astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri about the leak just before their bedtime late Monday afternoon. Mission Control first noticed the drop in pressure Jan. 1 and said the data showed a daily decline of about 2 millimeters of mercury. As of Monday, the pressure had declined a total of nine millimeters. That is equivalent to about one-quarter of a pound per square inch, said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield."

3 of 523 comments (clear)

  1. Visible? by irokitt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Would a leak this size be visible from outside of the station? I.E. would you see a small stream of gas? And since the ISS is broken into compartments, they should be able to seal each compartment and iron the leak down to a single compartment. Then its a matter of finding the leak itself.

    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  2. At this rate by dtfinch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They'll run out of air within the next couple hundred days. But that's only if they have no reserve tanks and fail to patch the leak.

  3. I'm an astro-nut by Dalroth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm an astro-nut. If I could control where most of my taxed income went, I'd almost certainly have it tunnelled off to Air Force black projects, NASA and science education.

    That being said, the ISS has long since become a turkey. It's time to cut that thing loose and build us something usefull. In particular, real telescopes that will let real science be done. This space station is nothing more than a big money black hole.

    I'd much rather have a space based inferometer placed at one of the Earth's lagrange points. We could learn a lot from something like that! What are we learning from ISS? Russia has no money... nobody else will cooperate with us... people can't stay up in space for a long time (hello mir?) and our space program is woefully inadequate. Great. Billions of dollars for this? I could've told you this years ago...

    Bryan