New Sensor Finds Leaks in Spacecraft

Roland Piquepaille writes "With financial support from NASA, Iowa State University (ISU) engineers have developed a sensor to quickly find leaks in a spacecraft. This sensor locates an air leak by listening to the noise generated by the air rushing out of the leak and includes an array of 64 elements that detects vibrations as they radiate along the spacecraft. Because astronauts cannot hear the noise caused by escaping air, NASA needed to design a system to help them. As one ISU researcher said, 'NASA wants to be able to find these leaks. Fixing them is easy. But the question is, "Where is the leak?"' Now that this sensor has successfully been tested on the ground, NASA is evaluating a proposal to build a prototype of the leak detection system for future missions.

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[mdarksbane]

I'm curious what size of leak they're targetting here.

I've heard an interesting suggestion for an automatic leak plugging system - floating, easily popped bags of quick drying sealent. Any leak will create air currents that will suck the bags into the holes, where they pop and seal the whole.

This of course ignores all sorts of potential problems (holes in areas obscured by cables/ductwork, for one thing) but I thought it was neat anyway :)

how it works

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a fairly lengthy presentation on this a while back so I have a rough understanding on how it works. It's an array of accelerometers which measures the vibration of the material it's mounted on and then uses software to "triangluate" (wrong word, right idea) the direction and distance from the sensor is to where the "sound" is coming from. There isn't an exact point, more like a probability distribution with hot-spots.

Re:In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

[Doc Ruby]

But only if there's enough gas to form a medium between the leak and the detector. Unless the entire surface is coated with the detector, then small leaks (with serious consequences over time) can't be detected. And coating with a sensor could use much cheaper and simpler tech.