Tag: iss

Air Leak on International Space Station Triggers Evacuation Protocol – Astronauts Shelter in Dragon Capsule While Russian Cosmonauts Work To Seal Microscopic Structural Fractures

ISS air leak is back in the news.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the security threat to the International Space Station – an air leak in a Russian segment of the Station that was first discovered in 2019, was dealt with, but now has become a problem again.

Yesterday (5), work on the leak prompted astronauts to shelter in their ‘lifeboats’ (the Dragon Capsule), fearing an evacuation might be required.

The Telegraph reported:

“Nasa and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have been struggling to seal microscopic structural cracks in a transfer tunnel leading to the Russian Zvezda module since 2019.

At its peak, the leak was venting more than two pounds of air per day, but in recent months the astronauts thought they had the problem under control.”

Five members of the ISS crew to were ordered to shelter inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, while two Russian cosmonauts attempted to assess and repair the leak.

“’We are comfortable with backing out of the safe haven config’, astronauts were told from Houston. ‘With today’s operations, they wanted to be extra safe, extra precautionary, and have the crew move into the safe haven posture’, a Nasa spokesman later said.

A safe haven configuration is an emergency safety procedure where crew members retreat into their docked spacecraft to use them as ‘lifeboats’ that can immediately evacuate to Earth should the space station suffer a catastrophic failure.”

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ISS Astronauts Told To Prepare For Possible Evacuation As Air Leak Worsens

NASA senior adviser and press secretary Bethany Stevens wrote on X that astronauts aboard the International Space Station have quickly shifted into SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and are prepared to evacuate if needed, after cracks and leaks in the Zvezda service module transfer tunnel appeared to worsen.

“The Zvezda service module transfer tunnel, known as PrK, has suffered from cracks and leaks for some time, and has been mitigated by Roscosmos as much as possible to date. The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely,” Stevens said.

According to NASA, the Zvezda service module is 43 feet long and contains living quarters, life support systems, communications systems, electrical power distribution systems, data processing systems, flight control systems, and propulsion systems.

Stevens continued, “The cracks have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely. NASA and Roscosmos have been working to determine the root cause of the cracks, and Roscosmos manages the issue through operational mitigation measures and periodic partial-repair efforts.”

Out of caution, NASA ordered all four SpaceX Crew-12 members, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams, to be on high alert inside Dragon during the repair.

NASA said it continues to work with Roscosmos and other station partners toward a more permanent fix for the long-running issue.

Reuters cited a senior NASA official who said the air leak has been monitored over the last few months but significantly worsened earlier this week, increasing from a loss of one pound of air per day to two pounds per day.

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DANGER IN ORBIT: International Space Station Is Leaking Air Again in a Problem First Detected in 2019

The aging ISS is plagued by a dangerous air leak.

The leak was confirmed by NASA last week, another instance of a recurring problem that the agency thought it had resolved earlier this year.

The New York Post reported:

“The 27-year-old orbiting space station has been plagued with air leaks since 2019 in a part of the station called the PrK module, a narrow transfer tunnel or vestibule on the Russian segment.

In January, NASA announced that the PrK module had finally reached a ‘stable condition’ after multiple inspections and sealant applications. But on May 1, the issue returned.”

NASA confirmed a ‘slow pressure drop’ within the PrK module, noticed as Russian cosmonauts unloaded cargo.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Capsule Docks With ISS To Rescue Stranded Boeing Astronauts

SpaceX delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) early Sunday as part of a NASA crew rotation mission that will bring home two Boeing Starliner astronauts stranded on the ISS for eight months. The lengthy delay occurred because the Biden-Harris regime sought to avoid optically displeasing headlines about Elon Musk rescuing the astronauts before the presidential election last November.

A little more than one day after launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Friday evening, the Crew-10 astronauts’ SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docked at the ISS early Sunday morning. 

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov entered the ISS shortly after opening the hatches between the ISS and the Dragon spacecraft around 0035ET.

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DREAM CHASER SPACEPLANE IS GEARING UP TO HELP NASA DELIVER CARGO TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

An innovative new spaceplane cargo system is advancing toward its first delivery to the International Space Station (ISS), as one of NASA’s commercial partners providing resupply services.

The Dream Chaser spaceplane, designed by Colorado-based Sierra Space, is an uncrewed cargo spacecraft that is expected to carry out its first demonstration mission next year, NASA said in a news release.

Currently the only commercial runway-capable spaceplane, the reusable cargo system comprises two components, the Dream Chaser, a lifting body spacecraft, and its cargo module, Shooting Star. The system, a modified HL-20 spacecraft, is designed for reuse as many as 15 times and can be prepared for launch in as little as 24 hours.

Dream Chaser’s first flight will undertake in-orbit demonstrations next year to help Sierra Space and its partners at NASA gauge its readiness for future resupply missions. Flight controllers with Sierra Space will oversee the launch, with assistance and support from NASA personnel and the agency’s launch facilities.

At the time of launch, Dream Chaser’s wings are folded within five-meter fairing panels that are jettisoned once they reach orbit, which protect the spacecraft while being carried to orbit on board a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket.

On its way to the ISS, Dream Chaser’s wings are deployed, as well as solar arrays on its cargo module, Shooting Star, which can deliver pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the ISS, as well as retrieve it and bring it back to Earth. The cargo module is disposable, and after each use, it can be jettisoned before reentry.

Before entering joint operations with NASA Mission Control in Houston, Dream Chaser will first demonstrate attitude control, abort capabilities, and other crucial maneuvers well beyond the vicinity of the ISS during initial test phases. These will be followed by near-field demonstrations, which will feature sensor systems and response commands that test its ability to maneuver within proximity to the space station before ultimately being cleared to approach it.

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Researchers Grow Stem Cells Aboard International Space Station In New Study

Scientists are growing stem cells in space in an effort to discover new ways to produce large batches of certain stem cells to treat a variety of diseases.

Researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are behind the program that delivered stem cells to the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend on a supply trip delivery.

“By pushing the boundaries like this, it’s knowledge and it’s science and it’s learning,” said Clive Svendsen, executive director of Cedars-Sinai’s Regenerative Medicine Institute.

The project is the seventh of its type that has included stem cells sent to space from experiments by the U.S., China, and Italy. The efforts are attempting to overcome the difficulty of growing large quantities of stem cells under the Earth’s gravity by conducting efforts beyond the planet’s atmosphere.

“In zero G, there’s no force on the cells, so they can just grow in a different way,” Svendsen said.

The particular cells used in the Cedars-Sinai experiment are pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These materials are utilized by scientists for a variety of treatments, ranging from skin to blood cells.

“Human iPSCs are ideal for creating and testing potential treatments that can be tailored to an individual,” ISS National Laboratory explains regarding the mission.  “Microgravity may overcome some of the problems involved in the processes by which stem cells divide and become different types of cells, which could advance the manufacturing of iPSCs for the treatment of various diseases on Earth.”

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Corporate media spreads hoax that Russian cosmonauts wore yellow suits to ‘support Ukraine’

When photos began to circulate online of Russian cosmonauts boarding the International Space Station (ISS), media outlets online quickly spread the hoax that the group had deliberately chosen to wear yellow and blue flight suits in solidarity with Ukraine by wearing the country’s national colors.

The connection between the color of the attire and the conflict in Ukraine spread to outlets like the BBC, Bloomberg Quicktake, The Times, and NPR.

But what many had hoped was an act of heroic defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime turned out to be an unrelated coincidence.  

Veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander for the Russian team aboard the ISS, quickly debunked the story, Reuters reported. In a news conference from the space station, he said the suits had been created six months ago, predating Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. Moreover, Artemyev expressed solidarity with his country, voicing no sympathy for Ukraine.

“Color is just color,” Artemyev said. “It has nothing to do with Ukraine. In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!”

He explained that the team had selected its colors based off of the team’s common alma mater—a college whose primary colors also used yellow and blue. “Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color,” he said.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel. “To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

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Russia says it will not strand American astronaut in space despite media reports

Last week, a flurry of news reports worryingly claimed that Russia was threatening to strand an American astronaut on the International Space Station in direct response to sanctions placed on the country as it continues to invade neighboring Ukraine. But Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos is trying to put those fears to rest, saying that it will bring home the astronaut as planned.

The NASA astronaut in question is Mark Vande Hei, who has been living on the International Space Station since April 2021. Vande Hei launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with two cosmonauts. While living on the ISS, his stay was extended to a full year, and he is slated to return home in another Soyuz capsule on March 30th. When he returns home, he’ll have the record for longest continuous spaceflight by an American astronaut, at around 353 days.

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Russia Blames American Astronaut for Mysterious Space Station Hole

The strange case of a mysterious hole discovered in a Soyuz capsule attached to the International Space Station back in 2018 has taken a troubling turn as an official with the Russian space agency now says that the damage was intentionally caused by an American astronaut. The bold accusation reportedly came by way of an article from the Russian news agency TASS. In the piece, an anonymous “high ranking” official with the Russian space agency put forward a rather elaborate scenario for how the curious hole, which measured approximately 2 millimeters in diameter, in the Soyuz capsule came to be and pointed the finger at American astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancello as the alleged culprit.

The unnamed Russian source claims that, which serving about the ISS, the astronaut suffered from a blood clot in her jugular vein. This condition, they assert, caused Auñón-Chancello to have “an acute psychological crisis” wherein she tried to damage the Soyuz capsule in a manner that would facilitate her early return to Earth. How, exactly, such an audacious plan would have worked goes unsaid, though the Russian official did note a number of curious elements about the incident which led to the space agency’s surprising conclusion that the creation of the hole was a proverbial inside job.

Specifically, they raised suspicions about the fact that a video camera monitoring the area had stopped working, that NASA refused to perform polygraph exams on the astronauts who were aboard the ISS when the damage was done, and that the evidence suggests that the hole was created by someone inside the capsule operating in a weightless environment, meaning it had to have been made by someone in space at the time. As one might imagine, NASA is not buying the conspiracy theory offered by the Russian space agency official and strongly pushed back against the accusation.

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Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get more crazy! Russian cosmonaut films five apparent UFOs flying over southern hemisphere

Eerie footage captured by Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner on board the International Space Station (ISS) which appears to show five as-yet unidentified “space guests” has been sent for analysis by Russian scientific experts.

The apparent UFOs were filmed flying over the southern hemisphere with an incredible backdrop in the form of the Aurora Australis. The cosmonaut just happened to be filming a timelapse while passing over the Antarctic when he recorded the strange sightings.

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