NASA Report Sees 'Safety Risks' at ISS – Leak Gets Worse

There has been an undetectable leak in the Russian portion of the International Space Station for years. This concerns the NASA Inspector General, among others.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The International Space Station (ISS) is becoming obsolete. Its oldest parts date back to November 1998 – and it shows. For example, there is a leak in the Russian part of the space station, which has been bothering space organizations since September 2019. It is located between the airlock where the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft can dock and the Russian Zvezda module, which was part of the space station. International since 2000. We haven't heard about the leak for a long time, but it never went away.

Now bring one published by NASA's Inspector General a report To the ISS, the leak is brought back to consciousness – and warns: In February 2024, NASA noticed an increase in the leak rate, which is why ISS officials from the USA and Russia met to talk about it. “The ISS program subsequently upgraded the service module transfer tunnel leak risk to the highest risk level in its risk management system,” the report said.

NASA and Roscosmos are searching for a leak aboard the International Space Station

The report also confirms that “cracks and air leaks in the tunnel pose a major safety risk.” The leak, which has been researched since 2019, remains a mystery. However, research is now focusing on “internal and external welds.” To control leakage, the opening of the Svesda unit leading to the tunnel can be closed. However, this is currently only being done temporarily, as spaceships continue to dock with the ISS at the end of the tunnel.

However, the current plan is to close the hatch permanently in a worst-case scenario. This would reduce the number of Russian docking sites from four to three. “According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident that it will be able to monitor and close the service module hatch before the leakage rate reaches an unsustainable level,” the report said.

NASA officials are concerned about a leak in the Russian portion of the space station

However, he also emphasizes that it is not at all clear what an “unsustainable level” is: “However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leakage rate becomes unsustainable, in February 2024, the leakage rate.” It was more than 0.9 kg of oxygen per day. In April it was said that he had already reached 1.7 kg, how Ars Technica I mentioned.

The International Space Station is constantly making a name for itself through leaks, mostly in the Russian segment. However, NASA wants to use the old space station until 2030 and not allow it to crash in a controlled manner until 2031. The private space company SpaceX has already been contracted for the ISS crash. The other partners on the International Space Station, namely the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Japanese agency Jaxa, agreed to use it until 2030, while the Russian space agency Roscosmos agreed to use it only until 2028.

The ISS is scheduled to collide with the International Space Station in a controlled manner in 2031

The original plan was for the International Space Station to be in Earth orbit by 2015. The extension until 2030 has to do with the fact that NASA wants to have a permanent presence in low Earth orbit. The plan is that after the controlled collapse of the International Space Station, there will be special space stations on which NASA and its international partners can continue research into weightlessness.

This planned change also has financial reasons: NASA currently spends about US$3 billion annually on the International Space Station, including research and crew transportation. The report stated that establishing a private space station would save the US Space Agency between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion annually. (unpaid bill)