A private astronaut mission that has just flee has exposed a new turn to a persistent – and potentially dangerous – problem at the most visited destination of humanity in space.
Axiom Space Mission 4, or AX-4, dissected from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:32 am et Wednesday after an extensive delay caused by tests with regard to leaks that teased the international space station.
For years, air is slowly leaking from a module controlled by Russia that is usually closed off from the rest of the space station. However, station operators recently realized that the gradual, steady leak had stopped. And that brought an even greater care.
It is possible that efforts to seal cracks in the outer wall of the module have worked, and the stains are finally catching as intended. But according to NASA, engineers are also concerned that the module actually holds a stable pressure, because a new leak has formed on an interior wall – so that air from the rest of the track laboratory starts to hurry in the damaged area.
In essence, his operators of space station are worried that the entire station is starting to lose the air.
Much about this problem is unknown. NASA revealed the worries in a statement of 14 June. The agency said it would delay the launch of the private AX-4 mission, carried out by SpaceX and the Houston-based company Axiom Space, while station operators worked to determine the problem.
“By changing the pressure in the transfer tunnel and monitoring over time, teams evaluate the condition of the transfer tunnel and the Liège seal,” said the statement.
More than a week later, the results of that research are not entirely clear. After unveiling the new Wednesday launch Doel on Monday evening, NASA said in a Tuesday statement that it collaborated with Roscosmos officials to investigate the issue. The space agencies agreed to lower the pressure in the transfer tunnel and “teams will continue to evaluate in the future,” said the statement.
NASA also commented on the leaking problem at the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, which did not answer on a list of E -mail questions.
The Axiom -4 Mission will be rid of the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida on 25 June 2025. – Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images
Years of leaks on the space station
The leaks, identified for the first time in 2019, are located in a tunnel that connects a Russian module named Zvezda with a docking gate that welcomes spacecraft with freight and supplies.
The cracks are tiny and usually invisible to the naked eye, hence the difficulty in patching problem areas.
The situation received new urgency last year when the leak percentage reached the highest reading so far. And it became clear that technical teams in the United States and Russia did not see what the problem could cause, according to Bob Cabana, chairman of the ISS Advice Committee of NASA, during a meeting of November on the issue.
“The Russians believe that continuous operations are safe – but they cannot prove that to our satisfaction,” Cabana added. “And the US believes that it is not safe, but we cannot prove that to Russian satisfaction.”
Neither NASA nor Roscosmos responded last week to requests for comments on how they are currently evaluating the safety risk of the leaks.
Axiom Space's Historical Mission
While Nasa and Roscosmos tried to solve the problem, the four crew members who now fly on AX-4 were about a month in quarantine in Florida, waiting for their chance to launch.
The private mission comprises decorated former NASA-Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who is now an Axiom Space employee, as well as three spatial spatial novices that become the first from their respective countries to visit the space station: Shubhanshu Shuklai, Sławos Umznański-Wtion and Tibsnański-Wńński-Wńński.
The group is expected to be in space for about two weeks, so that around 60 science experiments will be performed before it returns home.
It is not yet clear whether – or how – the leaking Zvezda transmission tunnel could influence the broader operations on the space station.
Although privately financed missions to the space station such as AX-4 are fairly rare events, NASA and Roscosmos send routinely rotating crews of astronauts and Kosmonauts to keep the space station staffed.
Crew-11, which marks the 12th Crew Rotation Mission that SpaceX performs on behalf of NASA, is currently planned to rise from July.
That crew comprises NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Astronaut Kimiya Yui; and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They are on schedule to spend about six months in space, as is typical of staff missions.
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