Cosmonauts find new cracks in the ISS
The international space station ISS. (Image: 3Dsculptor / Shutterstock)
It only seems to be a matter of time before the International Space Station is obsolete. Small leaks keep coming back. Now cracks have been discovered again.
The condition of the ISS has been criticized for years. According to NASA, the space station should remain in use until 2028. If the Russian astronauts have their way, it will be over as early as 2025. According to this, Russian cosmonauts discovered new cracks during a survey in a segment of the ISS that could expand.
“Superficial cracks were found in some places in the Zarya module,” confirms Vladimir Solovyov, formerly a cosmonaut himself and now chief engineer of the rocket and space company Energia, of the Russian news agency RIA. “That is bad and indicates that the cracks will spread over time.” The Sarja module is the oldest in the station. Currently, the cracks have not yet opened so far that air can escape, but the wear and tear on the Russian ISS segment is enormous. As Reuters reports, Solovyov assumes that there will be an avalanche of such defects from 2025 onwards, as the international space station and much of the equipment available there is showing its age.
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Always incidents
The Russian module Zvezda has also been affected by leaks for almost a year. There was even a pressure drop here in between. Some of the leaks have already been sealed, and more holes have yet to be plugged. According to the Russian space agency, however, there is currently no risk to the crew on board.
Lately there have been repeated incidents related to the ISS. It was not until July that the engines of the Russian research module Nauka accidentally ignited, causing the entire orbital outpost with seven crew members to turn and the ISS to lose its position. Even then, the retired aerospace engineer and book author James Oberg criticized the downplaying of the incident by NASA and Roscosmos. The near-catastrophe must be taken seriously as an “urgent wake-up call”, since it shows that NASA’s security culture is again showing “signs of decline”. The days of the ISS seem numbered.
