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The ISS has been continuously occupied in Earth orbit for almost 20 years.
A worsening leak on the International Space Station (ISS) has been plugged thanks to an unusual method: using floating tea leaves to find out where it was.
Since September 2019, a small amount of air has been escaping from the ISS at a rate of 0.6 pounds of air per day; not much, but it is cause for concern. However, by August 2020, the problem had increased fivefold, and the loss rate increased to 3.1 pounds per day.
Over the next several weeks, the crew began searching for the leak. This included closing hatches to isolate the leak, along with an ultrasonic leak detector. Ultimately, the location of the leak was narrowed down to the Zvezda module, the location of the Russian crew at the station.
Finding the actual leak itself, which NASA said posed “no immediate danger to the crew,” proved more difficult. But last week, the Russian space agency, Rocosmos, said the crew had successfully used floating tea leaves to find out where it was and plugged it up, although the cause of the small hole still appears to be unknown.
The ISS crew (cosmonaut Ivan Vagner pictured) were not in danger, NASA said.
“We believe that we have really identified the probable leak area,” said Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, one of six ISS crewmembers, the Russian news agency TASS reported. “We have distributed a tea bag before closing the transfer chamber.”
Ivanishin added: “We have several photos and videos of the tea bag’s flight direction or where it was intended to fly and this accurately shows the direction the air is blowing from the possible air leak.”
The crew has taped the crack, which will temporarily prevent further loss of air. The plan now is to find a more permanent solution to seal the leak.
This could include the use of equipment brought in by the most recent Soyuz launch on October 14, with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov on board.
Three more astronauts launched into the ISS last week.
“The ISS crew sealed the air leak using temporary means available at the station,” Roscosmos said in a brief statement on Twitter.
“Currently, [the] Head of the Operational Control Group together with the [ISS] the crew is developing an operations program to permanently seal the location of the leak. “
This is not the first time a leak has been reported on the ISS. In 2018, a small hole was found in one of the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the space station, possibly due to human error on the ground. Russia later said that although the cause of the leak had been found, it would not reveal what happened.
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