MOSCOW. Feb 24 (Interfax) - The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has temporarily isolated a number of possible air leak areas, and specialists are analyzing the obtained data, deputy head of the Roscosmos press service Dmitry Belkin said.
"The crew isolated the area of potential air leaks yesterday. Results of this work will become known after the transfer chamber undergoes another check for hull airtightness," Belkin said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 television channel (VGTRK).
Specialists from the main flight control taskforce at the Mission Control Center in the Moscow region are analyzing the data received from the ISS crew, he said.
"Once the information regarding the condition of the chamber hull is analyzed, a sequence for hull repairs will be elaborated. However, it is premature to draw final conclusions, including those about containment of the leak, until full information about the pressure and condition of the module is received and the maintenance is completed," Belkin said.
As Interfax reported earlier, the crew has found the presumed location of the second source of an air leak on the ISS. There were plans to plug the leak using plastic panels in order to see whether the crack was really there.
"We'd like to build an insulation barrier to contain the leak, if the crack is behind the pipe, it will simply be drawn to the crack," a representative of the Mission Control Center said earlier on Wednesday.
Cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov said later he failed to cover the presumed second source of an air leak onboard the station with a plastic patch due to its inaccessibility.
Ground-based specialists have cancelled the operation and advised that Ryzhikov proceed to Plan B: examine the module's wall using the microscope.
The air leak on the ISS was first reported on August 20, 2020. The Roscosmos press service said then that the ISS crew had isolated itself in the Russian Zvezda module for the period of checking the air pressure in the U.S. segment. Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin told Interfax earlier that the air leak on the ISS was insignificant and nearly untraceable by hardware. In turn, flight director of the Russian ISS segment Vladimir Solovyov said that the air leak rate was thousands of times lower than critical.
Cosmonauts used teabags last year to detect the probable location of the air leak and contained the leak using improvised materials. However, the leak has yet to be fully stopped.
The Progress MS-16 resupply ship delivered a powerful microscope to the ISS on February 17. The microscope will be used to look for other sources of the air leak. The resupply ship also delivered crack sealing materials.